


FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER: PERFECT CREATURE

by SheliakBob



Category: Frankenstein's Daughter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:48:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 42,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27238315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SheliakBob/pseuds/SheliakBob
Summary: A sequel to the 1958 film FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER from Astor Pictures.Originally planned to include a crossover with MISSILE TO THE MOON (with which the original film was released as a Double Feature), ultimately only suggested elements of MISSILE show up, teasing a possible follow-up work.The novel picks up shortly after the events of the movie as the US Air Force takes an interest in Oliver Frankenstein's gruesome creation.





	1. Chapter 1

THE MAN BEHIND DOOR THIRTY-SEVEN  
The click-click-click of her shoes echoed down the half-lit corridor. A muffled cacophony of hideous laughter, moans, and shrieks surrounded her, shut away behind heavy metal doors. The doors were painted a pale tan, set deep into the gray walls. The tile on the floor was the color of raw bricks. The smell of urine and bleach and stale sweat was overpowering.  
Major Astor hugged a clipboard against her chest and marched ram-rod straight toward Door Thirty-Seven.  
She missed the weight of her sidearm at her hip. She’d been forced to leave it at the nurses’ station on the other side of a barred security gate. She declined an escort, despite eager volunteers among the grinning male orderlies. No one else was permitted to hear what she had to say to the occupant behind Door Thirty-Seven.  
Finally she arrived at her destination. Without hesitation she unbolted the viewing port and slid it open.  
“Oliver Frank!” She shouted into the blackness beyond.  
Her voice echoed faintly, seeming to shout back at her from a great distance.  
There was a muffled groan from the dark cell beyond the door. Some shuffling.  
Abruptly a face appeared right at the port, inches away from her lips.  
It was a hideous face, horribly scarred by acid. Great milky-white boils and scars like lumps of curd spread across nearly bare bones. The face looked scalded, looked like cottage cheese spread over dried liverwurst.  
Major Astor’s stomach seized in a spasm of disgust. She regretted the cottage cheese she had with her salad at lunch. Regretted it, but refused to let it escape. With some effort she strained and held lunch in its place.  
“The name is Frankenstein! Oliver Frankenstein!” Snarled the ragged mouth in that destroyed face.  
The smell leaking out of the cell was simultaneously medicinal and sour. Menthol and antiseptic mingled with the rot of dead skin.  
The eyes of Oliver Frankenstein hungrily ran up and down Major Astor’s body. Her lunch protested again. His gaze was like the tracks of two racing slugs and she felt slimy and soiled everywhere those eyes touched her.  
The blistered lips parted in a crude smile, revealing perfect white teeth underneath.  
“Who sent you? Was it my brother? Tell Peter that I don’t need anymore psychiatrists or lawyers. Tell him to keep his money and his pity!”  
“Your brother did not send me, Mr. Frank. Your Uncle did.”  
“Uncle Ludwig?” The man said with some puzzlement. “I thought he was…”  
“Not your uncle Ludwig, Mr. Frank. Your Uncle Sam. I am here to give you an opportunity to serve your country.”  
There was a bark of crazed laughter then the face disappeared from the slot. There was shuffling beyond the door.  
“Dear God! Why would I want to do a thing like that?” asked the voice, from a surprising distance away. Major Astor had to wonder just how large the cell beyond Door Thirty-Seven could possibly be.  
“Because your Uncle Sam can get you out of this asylum. Your Uncle Sam can give you an opportunity to continue your work, your experiments.”  
There was a long silence from the darkness.  
“I’m listening.” Said the voice, suddenly right on the other side of the door again.  
Despite her self-discipline, Major Astor took a startled step backwards.  
She consulted her clipboard, shuffling some papers.  
“Is it true that you created a female creature, using the methods of your father and grandfather?”  
“Yes! I created a Perfect Being. I did what neither of the others could accomplish.”  
“And is it true that you can control this ‘Perfect Being,’ that it will follow whatever orders you give it?”  
“Yes.” He answered without hesitation. “The female mind is conditioned to a Man’s world. It therefore takes orders where the others wouldn’t. It wanted to serve me! I had perfect control over my creation, yes.”  
The arrogant pride in his voice irritated her, but Major Astor hid her annoyance by consulting more papers on her clipboard.  
“I hope you’re not asking me to create another such being, a toy for your officers to play with.”  
“That will not be necessary, Mr. Frank. We have reason to believe that the monster you created in Brighton is still alive. We have a fairly good idea where it is right now.”  
There was a long pause.  
“Frankenstein. My name is Frankenstein. And I am a Doctor.  
“The name on your record here is ‘Oliver Frank.’ For as long as you are an inmate at this asylum, you will be nothing more than Oliver Frank, Patient Thirty-Seven. Agree to work with our agency and Doctor Oliver Frankenstein will walk out this door. Today.”  
There was another long silence.  
“Unbutton your blouse.”  
“What?” Major Astor took anther involuntary step back, as stunned as if she’d been slapped.  
“Unbutton your blouse, Miss. If I am going to agree to assist you, then I want to see you. That is my price.”  
Major Astor stared icily at the ragged lips and perfect teeth grinning out of her from the viewing slot.  
“I don’t think you understand the nature of the offer I am presenting you…”  
“UNBUTTON YOUR BLOUSE!” Shouted the man inside the cell. “If you want my help, do as I say!”  
Major Astor gritted her teeth and traded stares with the glittering eyes of Oliver Frank. Their contest of wills lasted many long seconds.

Later that afternoon an inmate of the Brighton Asylum for the Criminally Insane was led out the front doors under heavy guard. The inmate’s head was covered with a cloth sack. His hands were cuffed behind his back and there were chains on his ankles. Burly, well-armed, Military Police walked to either side, each holding an arm in an ungentle grip.  
Ahead of them a stony faced Major Astor led the way.  
Her cheeks were still flushed an angry red.


	2. The Wild Witch of Frankenstein

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Wild Witch creature that terrorized the neighborhood before Oliver Frankenstein unleashed his vaguely female creation has returned.

THE WILD WITCH OF FRANKENSTEIN  
The town of Brighton was engaged in a monster hunt. The streets were abuzz with rumors, the newspapers were filled with witness reports, and during the after dark curfew police cruisers cruised the deserted streets, trying to flush out the lurking menace so many citizens claimed to have seen. The press dubbed the nighttime prowler the “Wild Witch.” Reports claimed that she had disheveled black hair, thick bushy eyebrows, madly staring eyes that never blinked, and crusty blue skin. Her fingers were supposedly tipped with razor-sharp claws and her broad, blackened teeth could chew through wooden doors or iron bars with ease. Some reports claimed that she ate neighborhood dogs or other small animals, and perhaps eyed children with unwholesome hunger.

On the outskirts of Brighton, at he edges of the Holy Redemption Cemetery, significantly after curfew, Brady Thompson and his two co-conspirators Bernie Michaels and Jackson Oliver, were up to no good. Holy Redemption was a small graveyard, much overgrown with weeds and shrubbery, hemmed in by an aggressively encroaching tree-line, that was once attended to by the congregation of a small but well-endowed Apostolic church, now long defunct. With no one to tend the graves or contain the rumors, Holy Redemption had acquired a somewhat lurid and mostly unwarranted reputation for being haunted. It was the reputed home of vampires, crypt-crawlers, and a wailing woman in white. It was also supposed to be where a cult of Voodoo snake-handlers gathered for rituals that featured frenzied priestesses dancing naked under the full moon.  
Brady and his friends had frequented the cemetery grounds since Fifth Grade, in the hopes that the latter rumor might prove true.  
Thus far, they had been disappointed.  
Tonight the boys were planning to liven up the evening with a few pranks based on the recent headlines about the “Wild Witch” sightings. They pooled their resources and bought a rubber caveman mask, which they painted blue and crowned with a rather sad-looking black wig that Jackson had stolen from his mother’s closet. They were taking turns donning the mask and leaping out at cars zooming by on Route Seventeen on their way to Brighton.  
They each had just a few seconds to leap out, crouch on the shoulder of the highway, and claw “ferociously” at the air as a passing car’s headlights splashed by the bend in front of the cemetery.  
So far they had elicited a few honking horns but none of the screeching brakes and fish-tailing that they were aiming for.  
They were becoming bored and rather disappointed with the way the prank was working out.  
“This sucks.” Said Jackson, with his succinct and slightly superior manner.   
He was a year older than the other boys and therefore believed himself to be the natural arbiter of all matters pertaining to suckage.   
“Yeah.” Agreed Bernie, who was yawning and growing sleepier by the minute.  
“Just one more!” Brady pleaded.  
Brady’s eyes gleamed and his heart pounded like a drum solo in his chest.  
Cemetery Bend, as the stretch of Route Seventeen in front of Holy Redemption was known, had been the site of a recent tragic and very bloody accident in which a young woman driver had died. “Topless Terry” the boys now called her, because the top of her head had been sliced off in the accident and never found.  
Brady spent five nights looking for it to no avail.  
Brady would never say so, but deep down inside he was hoping to reproduce that accident. The very thought gave him a fluttery, sick to the stomach kind of thrill.  
It is unlikely that he genuinely wanted to hurt anyone, mostly he just wanted to see a bloody mess in person. He read a lot of gory horror comic books and craved a chance to see something like that with his own eyes, not grasping, in his youth, the full ramifications of such a scene.  
“C’mon! Give me the mask. I’ll show you how it’s done!”  
Tugging the rubber mask, now slick on the inside from the combined breaths of the three boys, over his head and flexing his fingers into appropriately claw-like contortions, he scooted through the weeds searching for a slightly better position from whence to leap.  
He growled experimentally, imagining himself as a wicked, cat-eating devil-witch. Something growled back at him from the darkness deeper in the graveyard. There was the crunch of dry leaves and a brittle snap of twigs breaking.  
“Knock it off, Jackson.” Brady muttered, annoyed. “It’s my turn. Don’t break my concentration.”  
There was another growl, and some whispery sounds, as of a body gliding effortlessly through high grass.  
“Wasn’t me.” murmured Jackson.  
“Maybe it was Topless Terry!” wheezed Bernie.   
“Or a naked snake priestess!” chimed Jackson.  
Jackson was the most devout believer in the naked Voodoo snake priestess rumors of the three. Being a year older, he was privy to a whole slew of intense interests that his comrades had yet to become aware of.  
Angry that his concentration on a distantly approaching set of headlights was being disrupted, Brady stood up, hands on his hips, ready to give the others an authoritative tongue lashing.  
The words clogged in his throat and his tongue went numb when he saw what was creeping up behind the boys.  
A long, lithe female figure, dressed in a sheer nightgown with long, bare limbs that Jackson, no doubt, would’ve found intriguing, was splayed in the tall grass, scurrying forward like a gigantic blue-skinned lizard. Her head was raised above the weeds, huge bulging white eyes staring unblinkingly into Brady’s own.   
Her face was horribly contorted in a leering grin that bared broad, flat teeth caked with black dried blood. Her skin was cracked, wrinkled, and was a very light blue color. The hair atop her head, above the two-finger thick bushy black eyebrows, was a tangled mass of ebony curls that actually did very much resemble the stolen wig of Jackson’s mom.  
“The Wild Witch! She’s here! She’s really here!” screamed Brady, sounding far too much like his younger sister to his own ears.  
“Oh, give it a rest Brady-bones! Save it for the drivers.” Sneered Jackson.  
Bernie looked behind him once, always the first to fall for any of Brady’s pranks, saw the Witch slithering toward them, and leaped to his feet, darting across the highway and down the hill toward home as fast as his legs would carry him. He didn’t utter a sound the whole time.  
That rattled Jackson enough to make him turn around.  
The Wild Witch hissed at him.  
Jackson fainted dead to the world.  
He dropped in a limp heap, like a marionette with sliced strings. In a second his body was hidden by the high grass. It was as if he’d vanished by magic.  
That left Brady.  
And the Witch.  
They stared at each other in silence for a few seconds.  
The Witch snarled.  
Brady gurgled.  
In one lightning-like motion the Witch lashed out with a clawed hand. Her fingertips snagged the rubber face mask and ripped it to shreds.  
Jackson’ mother’s wig flew into the night, never to be seen again.  
Abruptly the Wild Witch sat back on her haunches, squatting in the weeds. There was a look of puzzlement on her distorted features.  
Brady felt the cool night air on his wet face and realized that the mask was gone.  
“Uh oh.” He whispered.  
A look of sudden comprehension dawned on the Witch’s face. She threw her head back and cackled with maniacal glee.  
“Oh damn.” Brady murmured.  
The Witch pounced like a wildcat, knocking Brady to the ground. Steely blue fingers tore open his checkered flannel shirt, baring his throat and hairless chest. The Witch crouched over him, grinning silently.  
As she lowered her mouth full of black-crusted teeth toward his throat, Brady felt hot drops of drool splatter on his neck.  
Suddenly the white glare of headlights splashed across them.  
The Witch looked up, a look of shock and strangely, of sudden shame on her face.  
With one flex of her legs, she leapt off of the boy and landed deep into the shadowy graveyard. There was a flash of the bottoms of her bare feet as she loped off into the blackness, sobbing.  
A car door slammed open.  
“Brady Patrick Thompson, you are in so much trouble!” shouted the shrill voice of a very irate Mrs. Thompson.  
“The Wild…the Wild Witch! She was here!” Brady stammered out. “She was really here!”  
Mrs. Thompson cuffed him hard on the cheek and grabbed his ear in a vice-like grip.  
“Not another word, young man!”  
“But she was!”  
She cuffed him again and half threw him into the passenger side seat.  
“Ow!” whined Brady.  
Mrs. Thompson climbed behind the steering wheel, then smacked him again, seemingly as an afterthought.  
There was not another sound as the Thompson family car speeded away from Holy Redemption Cemetery, spewing gravel all across the highway.  
One of the drivers of a passing car had recognized Bernie Michaels in a cheap rubber mask and wig pawing and hooting at his car, deduced the other likely suspects involved and called the appropriate parents.  
Brighton was a small town.

Karen Whitley strode out of the beauty salon like an heiress marching to a limo. The smile on her lips grew smugger with each clack of her high heels on the sidewalk. And expensive-looking rabbit fur wrap was coiled around her long slender neck like a furry python. The best part of her new look, which she fully expected would dazzle the Women’s Auxiliary Club, was her new hair-do. Sable black curls piled high one atop the other in a teased up mound that was all the latest rage, and which looked vaguely like some hunched animal perched on her head, ready to strike.  
The hair wasn’t her own, of course. That was cropped short and pinned down viciously beneath that gloriously magnificent wig, as punishment for being too thin and dry to style in the desired Do.  
Now she would get the respect and outright envy that was her just due as the wife of a moderately successful Assistant District Manager for a reputable national retail chain. The smile on her coral-tinted lips was Joan Crawford caliber tight and regal.  
She glanced at the streetlamps just snapping on as the last colors drained out of the sunset. A tiny frown marred her serene mask of cosmetics. Her appointment at the salon had run later than she planned, the price of perfection, one supposes.  
A faint chill seeped its way under the bunny-fur faux mink and rippled across her skin in tiny prickles.  
She sped the pace of her clacking somewhat, heading for her used sedan in the parking lot.  
She glanced at her watch.  
She would be late for the meeting if she didn’t hurry! Later than the fashionable fifteen minutes she’d planned even.  
She almost didn’t hear the growl from between the parked cars to her right. She did hear the scrape of nails on concrete as something stalked nearer. Someone’s animal off its leash, damn it!  
Turning to shout at the unruly beast she found herself face to face with a hideous, blue-faced wild woman with bulging eyes and bared teeth.  
Before she could shake off the shock and scream, the creature leaped at her.  
It jumped impossibly high on slender blue legs that must have been like coiled steel springs. The wild thing leaped clear over Karen’s head, lashing out with its claws in passing.  
There was a loud rip and the painful tearing of pins, hair, and scalp.  
Rivulets of blood began steaming down the sides of her face instantly.  
The hateful blue harridan had ripped her expensive new wig clean off Karen’s head with one sweep. She landed lightly on bare feet, wig clutched in both hands, and tore into it with her teeth. She worried it like a dog shaking a rabbit and tossed it high in the air, immediately leaping after it, snatching it out of the air with her teeth and shaking it viciously.  
The Wild Witch let out some fierce satisfied grunts and ran off down a dark ally, chewing the wig in her mouth.  
Karen stood stock-still as the world began to twirl uncontrollably around her.  
“Hey!” she shouted, stamping a foot.  
She didn’t think she was going to make the Women’s Auxiliary Club meeting tonight.  
She wanted to cry, but she fainted instead.

Max Purcell was a tennis instructor and a damned fine looking man. Fresh off the court from a tennis lesson that ran late, Max wiped the sweat from his face then threw the moist towel casually to the floor. Probably not the only thing he’d left moist tonight, he thought with a grin. The little high school angel he was teaching reluctantly ended their lesson with pink cheeks and bright eyes.  
Max chuckled.  
Like shooting fish in a barrel!  
Fresh, pink little fish, not quite the legal limit. That smelled like oleander.  
Not that Max knew what oleander smelled like.  
“Flowery” was good enough for him.  
With fresh, pink little petals, not quite in full bloom.  
Max’s thoughts tended to run in circles like that about certain things.  
He rolled the sweat-soaked white cotton off his perfectly chiseled torso.  
He paused to appreciate the view in the club’s full length locker room mirror.  
The rock hard abs and sculpted pecs were just the way they should be, but the wild-eyed blue face leering at him from the doorway behind him was a shock.  
“What the…?”  
As he spun around a hard, lightweight body slammed into his. Rough calloused hands slapped him over and over in the face while legs, slender and hard as rock, wrapped around his own like entwining serpents.  
He was bowled over and hit the concrete floor hard. For a moment he lie upon the floor, staring up at the dazzling white bulbs overhead.  
Then a dark face leaned over his.   
Cracked like drying mud, the skin of that face was blue. The nose was sunken in a skull-like pit and thick black eyebrows writhed like caterpillars over ping-pong eyes, wide and unblinking. The mouth was open in an excited grin.  
Drool splattered on his cheeks.  
Max tried to reach up and shove that face away, but hands like claws batted his away and slapped him hard in the face.  
One clawed hand sank its fingers into his hair, yanking his head up and slamming it down on the cement.  
It did this several more times while the face above him wheezed with laughter.  
Max’s sight went blurry and flecked with black spots.  
The legs wrapped around his own strained, writhing in spasms that nearly broke his leg bones. The thing on top of him began to rub its pelvis up and down against his crotch.  
“Oh no!” Max gasped in disbelief.  
“Yeeargh!” burbled the grinning face above him.  
The thing reared back for a moment, hiking an incongruously filmy sheer negligee up over its hips.  
Max tried to sit up and shoved and punched with all his might.  
The thing on him wheezed with laughter. His fists thudded on her face with no visible effects.  
The thing, tiring of his struggles, still wheezing with laughter, pulled back one of its fists then back handed Max in the mouth.   
Max went down, lips busted, teeth clattering on the floor beside his ear.  
His vision flared white hot then blood red then went dark.  
Actinic stars fired across the insides of his eyelids in pink and white bursts.  
A clawed hand reached down to his pants, seized hard and ripped cloth like paper.  
Rex started to cry.  
Then everything was hot and scrapey dry and a rhythmic hooting replaced the laughter.  
Max kept waiting to pass out, but sadly, he never did.

Officer McCracken walked up to Officer Daniels, who was scribbling something in his notebook with a stupid grin on his face.  
McCracken looked at the man sitting on the curb outside the Country Club, face bloody, wearing nothing but a coarse Red Cross blanket draped across his shoulders. The man was shivering violently, sobbing, barely able to hold the Styrofoam cup of coffee the ambulance medic placed in his hand.  
“What’s the matter with him?”  
Officer Daniels snickered, held up one finger for McCracken to wait while he finished writing.  
McCracken was a philosophical sort and in no hurry, so he whistled to himself and looked around at the manicured lawn and the tennis courts. Never in a million years would McCracken be able to afford a membership at a joint like this, not on a patrolman’s salary.  
Finally Daniels looked up and wiped a tear from his eye. He was grinning like an idiot.  
“Okay.” Said Daniels, taking a deep breath and tucking his notebook away in a breast pocket.  
“This guy says a girl, ‘bout five and a couple tall, broke into the Country Club locker-room, beat him up, and had her way with him.”  
McCracken glanced at the shivering man, a solid six three tall, well over two hundred lean muscular pounds.  
He whistled.  
“Had her way with him?”  
“Ravished him.” Daniels said with a nod.  
“Damn.” McCracken ran a hand through his sparse hair. “Guess some broads just don’t take no for an answer.”  
“Best part!” Daniels waved his hand. “He says that she was blue. And looked like a monster!”  
“Damn In-Laws.” McCracken deadpanned.  
“Sounds like our ‘Wild Witch’ again.” He continued.  
“Wild something.” Daniels agreed.  
“We’re going to give him a sobriety test and check for pills.”  
“Another rich dope fiend.”  
“Sounds like it.”  
“Newspapers are gonna love this one!”  
“I’ll say!”  
Both officers had a good chuckle at that.  
“Don’t suppose you’re going to need any help writing up the report, eh?”  
“Oh, no! No. No. This one is all mine!”  
“Well, I’ll leave you to it then. Time to get back to cruising the streets on monster watch. I’ll keep an eye out, maybe our Witch is still feeling lonely.”  
Officer McCracken waved and sauntered back to his patrol car.  
Daniels waved absently back, he’d thought of something else to write and had his notebook out again.  
Looked like the night was going to be another long hard one.

Trudy Morton, Trudy Bruder now—though she still thought of herself as a Morton, sat on the porch looking out at the lake. She sipped a vodka tonic while she watched her friends set up for the picnic lunch and party they were going to have that afternoon. It was only nine AM, a little early for Trudy to start drinking, but she’d had another one of her nightmares the night before and her nerves were still on edge. She’d been having the nightmares since before her Uncle Carter died, since before all that horrible business in the lab. They went away for a while after she and Johnny got married, but they had been coming back stronger and darker and more intense than ever before. Trudy found that alcohol helped, some. If she drank enough before bed, she either didn’t have the nightmares or couldn’t remember them—either way was good enough for her.  
If she drank enough in the morning she could sometimes forget the dreams she had the night before. That helped too.  
Johnny didn’t approve of her drinking. But Johnny wasn’t here. He was off helping his father with a big case in the Big City, so Trudy was left alone to spend the day with her friends and her bottle.  
The weather by the lake was cool but sunny. Trudy was wearing a black dress that was just a little too formal for the occasion, but she liked the way the skirts swirled when she walked. She was enjoying that swirl right now, twisting her hips back and forth while she leaned against the post, just enough to lift and spin the edges.  
“A little early, isn’t it?”  
Don didn’t like her drinking much more than Johnny did, but at least he understood that it helped ease the pain her nightmares inflicted.  
Don was eying her with concern.  
He was also eying the way her skirt lifted, baring just a glimpse of white leg underneath. There was a sad, wistful look in his eyes.  
She and Don had a brief affair, not that long ago. It was during the rough times when she was still settling her Uncle’s complicated estate and Johnny was just breaking in at his father’s law practice, after years of having ambitions of becoming a singer, professionally.  
It was hard for Johnny, giving up that dream after so long.  
At the same time Don had never quite gotten over Suzie Lawler, his sort of girlfriend, disappearing on him. Suzie always treated him like dirt, was always going out with other guys behind his back, or making fun of him in front of his friends. But Don, the big lovable lug, had really loved her and could never understand how she could just up and disappear like that, without even a word.  
So Don and Trudy kept each other company for a while, while the ones they really loved were missing.  
Trudy smiled.  
Don was fun. He was spontaneous and funny where Johnny was always trying to be more serious than he wanted to be. But in the end, Don proved to be a surprisingly good guy. The idea of sleeping with his best friend’s wife never set well with him, and he broke off the affair after a short, fun spin.  
The big lug even apologized to Trudy taking all the responsibility for the fling onto himself. He thought he was taking advantage of her loneliness while Johnny was away, while she was all fragile and broken from losing her uncle and the horrors that Oliver Frankenstein put her through.  
He begged her forgiveness, which she gracefully allowed and accepted.  
Men have such strange ways of forgetting who seduced who and remembering what suited their egos. So Trudy and Don became just close friends and worked to help each other through tough spots, albeit in a slightly less tactile way.  
Still, Don did sometimes look at her, the way he was right now.  
Trudy smiled and took a sip of her drink.   
She looked up at Don over the rim of the glass with a bit of a mischievous sparkle in her eye. But she stopped swirling her skirts.  
“Hey, Donny-O! How’s the morning treating you?” she asked, casually, smiling.  
Don didn’t fall for it for a minute.  
“Had another one last night?” he asked, concern eating at his own smile.  
She nodded.  
“It was a bad one, wasn’t it?”  
She nodded again, frowning and staring down at the wooden planks of the porch.  
“Not so much ‘bad’ as…intense.” She said after a moment.  
“It was nothing awful, not like the ones I was having back in town. I didn’t do anything awful. All I did in it was wander around in deep dark woods, aimlessly. Like an animal in the forest. But that’s what animals do in forests. It’s where they belong. It was just so real! It felt so real. And I could remember every minute of it when I woke up. Like it was something that really happened.”  
Trudy shuddered and slammed down the rest of her drink.  
“Still remember too damn much of it.” She murmured.  
She brightened for a moment, swirled ice cubes around inside her empty glass.  
“Make me another one, Donny-O?”  
Don frowned at her, but not in the angry way Johnny would have.  
“Why don’t we go for a walk down to the lake, instead? Check on how the others are doing.”  
Trudy pretend pouted.  
Then she sighed and extended an arm.  
Don took it and arm in arm they walked down to the lake.  
He stiffened a bit when she leaned into him, brushed his arm with her breast. But she took pity on his efforts at virtue and behaved herself the rest of the way.   
Don was really a good guy. A good friend.   
Johnny didn’t deserve him.

Deep inside her, Something stirred, restless. Hungry. Something knew she could have him, if she wanted. She could just take him, the way she did that other man, in the dream.  
For a moment she felt dizzy. Her mouth was actually watering.  
She shivered and the feeling melted away when they got out from under the trees, out in the sunshine, by the water.  
The Dark Thing inside her belonged in the shadows, among the trees, and it knew it. Sunshine burned its skin.

The others were gathering around the boat house by the lake shore. It was early, the party was supposed to start a little before noon, but the day was sunny and it seemed no one was inclined to stay inside. So the guests trickled in while the band was still setting up its equipment and doing sound checks. Most of the better families in Brighton owned houses or cabins on the lake, so a lot of her friends were practically next door. More would be arriving in cars from the city before too much longer. Trudy had even invited all the young Townie folk she knew. Though Lakewood, the local “town”, was little more than a centralized spot to rent boats and buy camping equipment. It had a post office, a gas station, a diner made from a converted train car, and a couple of stores for bait, tackle, and supplies. There were a dozen or so homes. But not much else.  
The folk were friendly and accommodating, polite to the visitors their economy depended on. Trudy genuinely liked a couple of the kids she’d gotten to know over years of visiting and hoped they’d get along with her choosier Brighton clique.  
Hullos and waves began almost as soon as she and Don walked into the sunshine. Cindy and Sheryl and Connie were there with their boyfriends Mark and Frankie and big Dan Daniels, the policeman’s son. Little Connie, in a red polka-dotted white sundress stood on one of the picnic tables and waved both arms so vigorously that she nearly fell over. She was such a little nut!  
Trudy waved back with a smile and a practiced laugh-toss of her hair. She and Connie were both brunettes in a sea of fashionable blondes so they tended to stick together, for mutual defense.  
Mark already had his shirt off, despite the cool breezes coming off the lake. He would’ve already been swimming if the water weren’t so cold. Trudy wondered how Cindy kept that boy clothed at all, then remembered that she didn’t really try all that hard.  
Sheryl was already eying one of the Lakewood boys with bad intent. Her boyfriend Frankie was really just there for show. He was pretty and well-mannered but too dull for Sheryl’s tastes. He would be busy hanging out with the guys and watching the band while Sheryl got down to real fun.  
Trudy sighed.  
“Be nice.” Don whispered, practically reading her mind.   
“Sweet as sugar, Donny-O.” she said with a practiced smile.  
As they walked up to the others, Dan Daniels noted Don’s arm in hers and raised an eyebrow at Don. His know-it-all smirk was none too subtle.  
Don quickly disengaged from her and hailed the guys with exaggerated nonchalance.  
Trudy all but rolled her eyes.  
She gave Dan her sweetest, most innocent smile, then winked at him.  
The big beefy guy’s face turned red and he discovered a sudden interest in discussing sports with Mark and Don.  
That’s what I thought. Trudy thought to herself.  
“Someone’s feeling saucy today!” Connie laughed.  
“Already had ‘breakfast’.” Trudy confided conspiratorially, using their codeword for morning drinks.  
“Nightmare?”  
Trudy nodded.  
“Don’t want to talk about it though.”  
“No problem.” Connie smiled.  
She was such a little pixie.  
“Didn’t sleep much myself.” She chirped. “Think there was a bear or something prowling around the woods by the cabin last night. Heard rustling and panting half the night. At one point I swear there was something looking in my window. The glass was all steamed up on the outside.”  
“Sure it wasn’t Dan or Mark?”  
Connie laughed.  
“Couldn’t say for sure. At least whatever it was didn’t get into the trashcans.”  
“That let’s Mark off the hook, then!”  
They laughed and traded hugs.  
The girls gossiped and joked, raided the snack tray periodically, and mingled as more guests trickled in by twos and threes, and the occasional carload.  
The Jazz Trio playing for the party finished their sound checks and began to warm up in earnest. Impromptu jam songs drew cheers and laughter from the guests, who began to cluster around the dockside bandstand. Some were clearly impatient to start dancing and the grinning musicians seemed more than eager to please them.  
Music notes skittered across the lake like phantom mosquitoes. Guitar riffs echoed among the trees, and the brassy rumblings of the drumset fluttered like a pulse in the shadows.  
Somewhere among the densely crowded trees, a lumbering form paused and tilted its head, turning from side to side to catch the distant sounds. There was labored breathing and a hoarse snort. Then the form turned unerringly in the direction of the sounds and began to crash headlong through brush, toward the music.


	3. Project Orphan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver Frankenstein's creation is recovered and revived. A certain investigative journalist takes an interest in the strange goings on in Brighton.   
> A monster is reborn.

PROJECT ORPHAN

Shortly after the events in the Morton House, two years earlier…  
“Dr. Carmichael? There’s a guy out here that slipped past the police line who wants to look around.”  
Carmichael frowned but barely looked up from the notebook full of Oliver Frank’s neat, precise script.  
“Who is he and what does he want?”  
The officer glanced behind him and then shrugged.  
“He’s got a name and a press pass, and they match.”  
Carmichael sighed.  
“Alright. Don’t suppose it will hurt anything. Tell him to be quick and not to touch anything. ANYTHING!”  
“Will do.” The officer said cheerfully.  
He turned back to the nervous little man in the rumpled suit with the cheap hat.  
“You owe me big!” the policeman whispered.  
A wad of cash changed hands.  
“Not anymore.” The reporter said with a rueful smile.  
The officer flipped through the bills, grunted, then stepped out of the way and let the man through.  
There was a snap-pop as a flashbulb went off and the reporter mumbled an introduction.  
Carmichael barely heard him, and acknowledged him even less. He was examining the few unbroken vials and test tubes on the work table, trying to match them up with the numbered entries in either Morton’s logbook or Frank’s notes.  
“So, Doc. What can you tell me?”  
The Doctor grunted and frowned.  
“One of these men was a certifiable maniac and the other was a genius. I’m trying to figure out which was which.”  
The reporter chuckled.  
“Can I quote you on that?”  
“Sure. As long as you spell my name right.”  
The reporter tip-toed around the ruined lab, snapping pictures and trying not to step on the broken glass, which was everywhere.  
He took a close-up photo of the workmen who were boxing up the books and equipment that Carmichael had already examined and tagged for removal.  
“So is all of this going to be used as evidence in the trial?”  
“Not going to be any trial.” Carmichael responded indifferently.  
“How’s that?”  
Carmichael shrugged.  
“Morton is dead and Frank has just been certified unfit to stand trial. They’re sending him to an asylum for the criminally insane. For ‘observation’. Don’t think anyone is going to be hearing from him again for a long time.”  
“Is it true that this Oliver Frank’s real name is Frankenstein?”  
Carmichael shook his head.  
“That’s what he keeps claiming, but all his identification says Frank. That’s the name on his college degrees and in what references we could track down. There’s no statement one way or another from any of the surviving Frankenstein family members, either here in the States or in Europe. Looks like it might just be part of his delusion.”  
The reporter nodded and made a note.   
“Delusion.” He said to himself, drawing the word out as he wrote.  
Carmichael smiled.  
While Carmichael handed off one of the test tubes to an aide who packed it in a Styrofoam box and added it to a carrying case, the reporter wandered around a ruined, fire-scarred work table.  
He whistled to himself, snapped a picture, then pushed his hat off his forehead as he knelt down to look at something.  
There, on the cement floor, was a long, wide outline of a body. There was no chalk, nor any need of chalk. The stocky form was clearly visible, a black crust of burnt meat and scorched fabric charred onto the floor. Somebody would have to scrape it off.  
“And this?” the reporter asked in a hushed tone. “Was this the, ah, the…”  
“Monster?” Carmichael finished for him.  
The reporter swallowed hard and nodded.  
“Not sure exactly who or what that really was.” He replied noncommittally. “The remains of whatever it was have been disposed of, since no one could identify what was left and no autopsy was needed for a trial.”  
“Disposed of?”  
Carmichael nodded.  
“Just like that.”  
The Doctor put down the notes he was examining and turned to face the man, who had an innocently inquisitive look on his face.  
“Just. Like that.” Carmichael repeated, firmly.  
The reporter rocked his head from side to side then nodded as he wrote something down.  
“So, if none of this is needed for evidence in a trial,“ he asked, gesturing broadly to the boxes of books and crates of equipment the workmen were hauling out. “Just where is it going?”  
There was a long pause.  
“We’re shipping everything to Rockwell Labs, to go over it and dispose of anything dangerous. Half of this equipment came from our warehouses in the first place.”  
“Our warehouses?” the reporter jumped on, giving the Doctor a shrewd and not at all bumbling gaze. “So you work for Rockwell Labs, not for the Police Department, then?”  
Carmichael glared.  
“What newspaper did you say you were with, Mister…?”  
“INS. The International News Service.”  
“Never heard of it.”  
“We’re trying to change that.” He said with a smile.  
“Well, we’re very busy here. If you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to my work. Is there anything else that you need?”  
The reporter purposefully closed his notebook and slid it back in a suit pocket.  
“Oh, I think I have everything I need.” He said with a smile.  
Carmichael stared, his face stonily neutral.  
The reporter doffed his hat in farewell then quickly ducked back out the door he’d come in through.  
Carmichael carefully counted to ten before turning to one of the workmen.  
“Get me Major Astor. We may have a problem.”

The Brighton County Coroner stared down at the huge chunk of carbonized meat, roughly in human shape, on the gurney.   
“What am I supposed to do with this?” he asked, waving gloved hands about.  
The orderly shrugged.  
“We just deliver them, Doc.”  
The Coroner sighed.  
He picked up a stainless steel probe and poked experimentally at the mass. Black crumbs tumbled off, but it was more or less one solid, rock hard mass. Whoever it had been must have been huge, the Coroner marveled. Generally a body this badly burnt would be shriveled and nearly skeletal. John Doe here, was still bigger than he was, even in charcoal briquette form.  
Tossing the probe aside, he picked up a scraper and began to take experimental samples off of the lump, from various parts of the anatomy. The victim, he quickly noticed, had been wearing some kind of synthetic fiber clothing. The material had melted and adhered to the seared meat in syrupy globs, like strings of hot tar.  
The Coroner winced.  
What a terrible way to go!  
The hooked edge of his instrument hit something metallic and snagged. He tugged at it for a few seconds until he could work part of it loose. It was an electrical wire! He followed it up the arm to the shoulder joint where he found that it was attached to a little box-like cube that was sunk deep into the burned flesh. He scraped some more before determining that it was actually embedded in the tissue, sunk deep, possibly even to the bone underneath.  
The wires and machinery might mean something, he decided. It might go toward explaining how the body got so deeply burnt. There must have been some kind of chemical accelerant on the skin, maybe even inside the flesh itself. Perhaps an industrial accident? The body was burned as if it had been soaked in rocket fuel then ignited.  
He sighed.  
This was going to be a long night, he decided.  
Still at a loss as to just where to begin, he selected a body thermometer from the tray and shoved it into the torso of the corpse. He leaned into it with both hands before resorting to a mallet to drive it all the way.  
The result astounded him.  
The thermometer was registering over a hundred degrees. Hours after the combustion event, that shouldn’t have been possible. The outside was cold and hard as a rock.  
He wrote down the result, then pulled the thermometer out.  
With some reluctance he reached for a bone-saw.  
“Doctor, put that down!” barked a man’s voice from the doorway.  
The Coroner jumped, startled by the unexpected voice and actually dropped the instrument. It clattered to the floor.  
A very serious-looking man in an Air Force uniform with buzz-cut hair frowned at him over a clipboard full of forms.  
“We’re taking custody of that body.” The man barked gruffly.  
He jerked his head in the Coroner’s direction and two armed Military Police officers pushed into the room, yanked the gurney out from under the Coroner’s hands and began to roll it quickly out the door. One of them passed long enough to snatch a folded sheet off a nearby stack and flicked it over the charred corpse.  
“What’s the meaning of this?” The Coroner shouted.  
The first man, a Lieutenant by his insignia, slapped the clipboard across the Doctor’s chest.  
“All the forms are right here.” He said brusquely before turning on his heel and striding away.  
The Coroner looked down at the clipboard he was now clutching. There were certainly a lot of forms attached to it. Mostly carbon copies, all with important signatures on them.   
The court order on the top was in the original, though. He recognized the Judge’s name from the signature, the ink of which was barely dry.  
Finally he sighed, pulled his mask off and began slipping the gloves from his hands.  
Looks like it’s going to be an early evening after all, he thought with a smile.

Lt. Wilson eyed the charcoal-colored lump on the surgical table dubiously.  
“Are you sure we can learn anything from that mess?”  
Dr. James Carmichael sat down the volume of Oliver Frank’s notes he had been consulting and picked up a bone-saw.  
“I think you’ll be surprised, Wilson.”   
Carmichael selected a section of the leg, a little below the knee, and carefully lowered the spinning blade. The whine of the tool deepened and a plume of black dust sprayed away from the corpse.  
“Have you ever roasted marshmallows, Wilson?”  
“Certainly, Sir.” The Lieutenant frowned. “What’s that got to do with our subject?”  
Carmichael worked the saw across the leg, eventually cutting a groove all the way around it.  
“When you stick a marshmallow in the fire, the surface burns and caramelizes. It turns a nice bubbly black. That whole roasted crust just slides right off in your mouth.”  
“Delicious, Sir.”  
“And what do you have underneath that burnt top layer?”  
“Goo, Sir. More marshmallow.”  
“Exactly! Here, help me pull on this.”  
Wilson grabbed hold of the blackened skin and pulled when Carmichael gave the signal. To his surprise the whole crust of charred flesh slipped easily off the leg beneath. It was like tugging off a slightly stubborn boot.  
Once off, they dropped the crust on the floor where it cracked like cheap ceramic.  
The leg beneath the burned layer was pink. Raw muscle with some slight white marbling, covered with a layer of sticky mucous-like slime.  
“Goo!” Carmichael said, whipping his brow with the back of his forearm.   
Wilson wrinkled his nose. The smell was overpowering. Salty and sour, like stale sweat, only much more intense.  
“What’s that stuff?”  
Carmichael leaned forward to study the dripping pink limb.  
“Skin. New skin, already starting to harden on contact with the air. A whole new layer of tissue is growing right there, before our eyes. Replacing the damaged tissues we removed.  
Sure enough, in mere moments the stuff that had looked like bubblegum-snot congealed, turning into a glistening layer of pink skin. Moments after that it became slick and dry. In less than an hour the raw pink color faded to a pallid gray-white. There was no sign of scarring.  
Carmichael recorded the changes at precise intervals throughout.  
“That’s incredible!” Wilson said at last.  
“That,” noted Dr. Carmichael, “is the Morton serum at work. The miracle cure-all that Carter Morton was trying to perfect, catalyzed by Digenerol. That is why Oliver Frank worked so hard to become Morton’s lab assistant. That regenerative serum was the last element he needed to complete his ‘Perfect Being’. The missing agent he could not come up with by himself.”  
“So, Morton really was a genius, not just a crazy crackpot.”  
“It seems so.”  
“Mr. Rockwell is not going to like that. He’s the one who fired Morton for his ‘outlandish’ obsessions. Now it looks like Morton was the one that got away.”  
“Almost.” Carmichael pulled on a surgical mask and fresh gloves. He hefted the saw and turned it back on, its eager whine echoed through the chamber.  
“Let’s finish stripping our little beauty here and see what she looks like naked.”

“Beauty is not exactly the word I would’ve used.” Wilson mused, hours later, looking at the glistening pink thing on the table.  
Carmichael had done almost all the cutting, Lt. Wilson, a trained army field medic, did most of the tugging and pulling and cracking open.  
Both men were exhausted. The floor around them was covered with shards and pieces of blackened husk.  
“She’s not going to win many pageants.” Carmichael agreed somberly.  
The denuded body on the table was seven feet long and half again as wide as either man. Broad and stocky, the glistening pink body bulged with hyper-developed muscles that even in rest were harder than tire rubber.  
“It looks more like a linebacker than any broad I’ve ever dated.”  
Wilson wanted a cigarette more than anything after their hours of labor.  
“I know that bit is female.” Wilson said, gesturing at the oversized genitalia between the thing’s legs with the claw hammer he’d used to pry scorched crust away. The creature’s genitals were three times the proportional size for the body. “But maybe he just used male parts for the rest of it.”  
Carmichael shook his head. He was examining the ropey cords of scar tissue along the seams where disparate body parts were sewn together.  
“According to his notes, Oliver Frank used only female donors for his creation. He seemed kind of obsessive about that. He wrote about how he wanted a Perfect Being as powerful as the ones his father and grandfather had created, but without any taint of the ‘inextinguishable will to dominate that permeates male tissues of all types.’ He uses that line over and over when describing his predecessors’ failures.”  
Carmichael left off his examination to collapse in a folding chair nearby. He pulled off his surgical mask and stripped off his gloves. Kicking a curved piece of charred torso away from his chair, he fished a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. He offered Wilson one, which the Lieutenant gratefully accepted.  
In return, Wilson provided a book of matches from his own pocket.  
“In his notes, Frank describes how he sought out female donors of unusual size whenever possible. But he treated all the body parts with growth hormones and held them in nutrient baths before attaching them. By his method he produced a kind of artificial gigantism that increased the size of the individual parts significantly.”  
The denuded body was drying now. The new skin and flesh were fading from raw pink to grayish white. The body looked like it had received intense an uneven sunburns rather than appearing freshly peeled.  
“Notice the breasts,” Carmichael pointed out, waving his lit cigarette. Without clothing or carbonized crusts these were now apparent, but they still seemed barely more than extensions of the massively developed pectoral muscles underneath, fatty lumps stretched so wide that they nearly disappeared. The nipples were shockingly long and an inflamed bright red in color.  
“While they were probably never very prominent on the original donor, they were pulled and stretched out of shape by the growth of the muscle tissue and ribcage. The generally oval horizontal shape of the aureoles clearly shows the distortion.”  
Wilson pointed to the livid suture scars that crisscrossed the torso and marked the junctures of each limb and of the neck. There was also a long Y-shaped scar that ran between the breasts and down the belly to the pubis, exactly like an autopsy incision.  
“You can see where the sutures were,” he said. “You can even still see metal hooks and staples in a few places. Will all the pieces hold together with the top layer of flesh burned off like that?”  
Carmichael nodded.  
“The stitches are long healed. Franks, unlike his father and grandfather, was not actually much of a surgeon. The sutures were put in just to hold the parts in contact as they grew together. Franks used some kind of gel invented by his grandfather that causes cells to break down into a type of primordial proto-cell that then takes on the characteristics of surrounding tissues. That’s how the Frankensteins have managed to reconnect nerves and veins and connective tissues decades before modern surgical techniques were invented.  
You ever put together a plastic model, Wilson?”  
Wilson nodded.  
“A Thunderbolt fighter kit. Used to love that kind of thing.”  
“Well, the Frankensteins did something like that. This gel of theirs acts as a biological glue. They stitch the pieces together for the same reason you’d hold plastic model bits until the glue dried. Just to hold the parts in contact until they would stick together on their own.  
Frank’s predecessors were genuinely gifted surgeons, which allowed them to connect ganglia clusters and arteries with precision applications of the gel. Our Oliver couldn’t do that, which is why he had to attach a whole head instead of inserting a brain. He needed all the connections more or less intact. He couldn’t piece together the finer systems.”  
“He could’ve picked a better sample of head.” Wilson said with a grimace.  
“Yes, it is a bit of a mess, isn’t it? He must’ve felt that he was running out of time and couldn’t be more patient in his selection processes.”

Suzie Lawler woke up inside the stench of burned flesh. She couldn’t see or hear or feel anything, but the overpowering charred meat smell enveloped her like a cloud of smoke.  
She floated in that smell for a timeless eternity, unable to move.  
Then a sudden chill swept over her. She felt cold but could not shiver. Other than the sensation of coldness she felt entirely numb.  
She could smell cigarette smoke with astounding clarity. Enough so that she craved a smoke herself, more out of conditioned habit than any real need for nicotine.  
There were voices. Far off. Muffled.   
She couldn’t actually make out what they were saying, but somehow she knew that they were talking about her, and it was beginning to make her angry nonetheless.

“The thing I don’t understand, Doc,” Wilson said at last, rubbing out the last of his cigarette on the edge of a table. “Is why Frank bothered to put all these pieces together like some kind of big meaty jigsaw puzzle. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to just pick one body, grow it in his vat of whatever and bring that to life? Why all this obsessive fiddling around with bits and pieces?”  
Carmichael blew a cloud of blue smoke out of his nostrils.  
“You know why you ask that question and Franks apparently never did?”  
Wilson shook his head.  
“Because you are sane.”

Project Orphan, as their research mission was officially dubbed, operated out of an isolated Quonset hut far down a gravel lane in the mountains above Brighton. Originally a radar tracking station operated y the Army Air Corps and later the USAF, the station’s equipment was obsolete and its duties had been subsumed by a more modern facility to the north. The station was abandoned, the equipment mothballed, and according to public records, the remaining Quonset hut structure and attached generator were leased to Rockwell Labs as a storage facility.  
Dr. James Carmichael and Lt. Patrick Wilson were the only personnel assigned to Orphan. They submitted all their reports and findings to Major Astor, who in turn passed the most important information on to a shadowy figure known only as “The Colonel.”  
In the weeks and months that followed, Carmichael and Wilson conducted thorough examinations of the inert body in their care. X-Rays were taken, every orifice was poked and scraped and dilated and examined with flashlights and magnifying lenses.  
They used hoists and harnesses and wheeled carts, metal stands and traction braces to manipulate the limp form while they conducted their investigations.

“Note the ball-bearing like structure embedded in the flesh to either side of the spinal column and the boxy peg structures at the shoulders, hips, and wrists.” Carmichael said, as much to the recorder as to Wilson. “I believe that Frank intended these as relays, or electronic boosters for wave impulses from the brain. One of the perennial problems of the Frankenstein creations has been deterioration of the nervous systems over time, the nerves appearing to be less resilient than other tissues treated by their methods.  
Frank designed his ‘Daughter’ so as to avoid the degenerative defects by relying on electrical, mechanical back-up systems. His creation is as much robot as biological construct. He didn’t even try to bury the wires inside the tissues. He just strung them externally.  
Indeed, the metallic box-like structure grafted into the back of the skull appears to have a dense system of circuit boards and may be the main processing unit for controlling The Daughter. The brain itself could be used more for storing information and processing sensory data than for cognitive direction. There certainly seems to have been little effort to preserve the frontal lobes which are badly damaged and largely non-functioning. Wires extend through all parts of the brain, connecting sensory and motor centers to the electronic processor in the back of the skull. There are other connections whose purpose are less clear.”  
“We have gathered as much information as we can from the inert subject. No further results are to be expected without dissection or other destructive procedures.  
I am officially recommending an attempt at revival, restoring animation to the body, which is otherwise alive and healthy despite all respiratory, circulatory, and neural systems being in suspension.  
Windmill Protocol will be in effect.  
Awaiting your instructions.”

Dr. Carmichael, Director Project Orphan  
Your recommendation for activation, contingent on implementation of Windmill Protocol, is approved.  
Proceed with caution.  
Additional personnel and specialized equipment will be made available.  
\---Major Astor

Lt. Wilson looked around the workroom at the grim-faced soldiers stationed by every exit and the flame throwers they carried.  
“So that’s the Windmill Protocol? Simple. Looks pretty effective.”  
None of the newly assigned soldiers had given their names or spoken a word since their arrival.  
The leader of the squad merely presented a jacket of written orders to Dr. Carmichael and then dispersed his men to their assigned positions, where they waited with narrowed eyes and lit pilot flames in the nozzles of their weapons.  
“Are we going to set up a lightning rod or try the thing with the kites? The National Weather Bureau is predicting clear skies for the rest of the week. We may have a long wait.”  
Carmichael grunted and looked up from the logbook he was scrutinizing intensely. They’d already gone over this. The Doctor suspected Wilson was speaking for the benefit of the soldiers.  
“I’m thinking we should just crank up the generator to maximum capacity and throw a switch.”   
“Simple but effective.” Wilson deadpanned.

Suzie felt tossed about, moved this way and that, like a balloon floating numbly through a windy sky.  
The cold ceased to bother her.  
The voices became a distant buzz, droning endlessly.  
She felt twinges of discomfort, even flashes of outrage, but they passed before she could tell from whence they came.  
Then, quite suddenly, she was in terrible pain. It felt like she was being stung by thousands of hornets all at once. That she was on fire. That battery acid flowed through her veins.  
Suzie wanted to scream, to cry, to beg the pain to stop, but she remained a voiceless prisoner inside a blind, suffocating shell.

The Daughter stiffened the moment that Carmichael threw the switch but other than that seemed oblivious to the voltage running through its body.  
The Doctor switched off the power, then went to check the connections to the creature. The new replacements for the external wiring. The body was hot to the touch, but was otherwise unchanged.  
“I’m going to hit it again, once the equipment cools down.”

The second jolt had a much more pronounced effect.   
This time the body did not just stiffen, but the limbs began to spasm and bound on the table. Various fluids squirted out of orifices. The creature’s mouth opened in a silent scream then snapped shut and the teeth began to chatter.  
The nipples on the breasts stood out almost as long as a man’s thumb, throbbing an angry red.  
When he once more shut off the power to preserve the breakers, the body continued to tremble and shake.  
Abruptly, with startling swiftness, The Daughter snapped the leather restraints holding it to the table and bolted upright. It landed on its feet and began to sway, teeth still chattering. There was a gush of expelled waste water, more chlorine than urine, that spread across the floor like a spilled bucket.  
The creature let out one incoherent bellow then its mouth snapped shut and it stood rigidly at attention.  
There was a series of faint clicking sounds, a kind of metallic rattling that ran down the relays that lined its spine.  
The soldiers all raised their flame throwers, ready to send streams of jellied gasoline showering over the creature. But it did nothing but stand rigidly in place. Its eyes were open, staring straight ahead.  
“I think it’s going to be okay.” Carmichael said, gesturing for the soldiers to lower their weapons.  
None of them did.  
The Daughter remained under the nozzles of the squad until Carmichael and Wilson walked ti to the back of the building where a reinforced containment cage had been erected for it.  
The creature followed meekly, responding to tugs on its massive arms or slight pushes against one or the other shoulder. Once in its cage, it sat on the metal bench provided for it with no further prompting.  
Once the cage door was locked and secured, the soldiers lowered their weapons. The squad leader walked up to Carmichael, saluted, and they all filed out as silently as they had arrived.  
“I’m gonna miss those guys.” Wilson said, lighting a cigarette.

Wilson stared at the thing in the cage while Dr. Carmichael read through Oliver Frank’s copious notes on its creation.  
“Hey, Doc!” he yelled across the workroom.  
“Um hmm?”  
Carmichael didn’t even look up from his reading. He had his reading glasses on which indicated that he meant business in tackling the records.  
“If the Morton serum is a miraculous cure-all, why hasn’t it repaired this thing’s face?”  
That made Carmichael look up from his book.  
“That’s a good question.”  
Doctor Carmichael took off his glasses and sauntered across the room to stare at the creature’s horrifyingly distorted visage.  
“Well, the damage is easy to explain. Frank’s notes indicate that Donor 22-S, the only identity he gives to his source for the head, was struck by a fast moving automobile. The front left tire actually rolled over the head, dragging the body under the car for several yards.  
The heavily damaged left side is where the face was ground against the pavement and abraded. The notes say it was practically ‘hamburger’ when Frank got it and he did what little he could to repair the damage before the transplant.”  
“Doesn’t look like he could do very much at all.” Wilson observed.  
“The fissure that bisects the upper part of the face, from the brow down over the nose, is where the head cracked and split open under the weight of the car. The fracturing continues under the surface up over the top of the scalp. The brain itself was partially extruded through the break in the skull. Frank notes that while the brain was damaged and distorted, it remained sufficiently intact for his purposes.  
He used metal plates to cover the places where there were missing skull fragments, and of course he inserted multiple wires and the electronic processor box in the back.  
He wrapped the head in bandages even after the transplant partially to hold everything together, but more to sop up the cerebral-spinal fluid that seeps out of the fissures. I’ve done the same thing here to prevent a constant sticky mess.”  
“So. Yeah. The woman’s head was a mess. Did Morton’s formula not work?”  
“Yes and no, is my guess. Frank was in a hurry to use the 22-S head, so he did not let it soak in the nutrient solution as long as he might have. And he injected the growth hormones rather than using them in solution.  
According to the notes 22-S was quite a beautiful girl before the accident. The rapid bone and tissue growth distorted the original features and the creature’s abnormally high blood pressure keeps the head pumped full of fluids, bloated as you see.  
The Morton serum and Digenerol catalysts were applied after the transplant. My guess is that it will repair any damage done after that time, but cannot restore the original features or close the fractures because the biochemical treatments Frank used overwrote the donor’s living cell structures.”  
“So, it’s going to look like this forever, no matter what else happens to its face.”  
“That would be my guess, yes.”  
“You poor gruesome bitch.”

Suzie Lawler, now able to hear words clearly enough to make out their meanings wanted to scream, but she couldn’t move any of the face’s muscles.  
For the fourth time that day, The Daughter failed even the simplest manual dexterity tests that Dr. Carmichael set up. The thing’s hands were badly damaged and partially replaced by prosthetic extensions. It could open and close its hands, but virtually nothing else. Even turning a doorknob could take repeated attempts.  
“No.” Carmichael said, shaking his head sadly. “I don’t think there’s anything that can be done with them. Frank let them deteriorate to far before treating and transplanting them. Those hands were practically rotted by the time they were attached. This is as good as they are ever going to get.”  
“So, no playing the piano, eh?’  
“I would think not.”

The Daughter did not seem to feel thirst, though it would drink copious amounts when directed to. However, the creature had an insatiable appetite for meat, which it would eat cooked, raw, or even frozen. All with equal gusto.  
Its hyperactive digestive processes would utilize almost a hundred percent of the protein it was given. It defecated only infrequently and then only in thin gruel-like streams with chunks of whatever undigestable material it had consumed, usually bone.  
It would not eat fruit or vegetable matter under any circumstances, even when commanded to do so.

“You know what creeps me out the most about it? Other than its face.” Wilson asked once, standing by the cage watching the naked creature shuffle about aimlessly.  
“No, what?”  
“Have you noticed how none of the body hair matches? What little hair is left under the bandages on top of its head is platinum blonde. I see that every time I change the dressings. But that thicket growing between its legs is gray. Both armpits have different colored hair, the left one is more reddish. The stubble on the left leg is thick and wiry, like black bristles. But the hair on the right leg is light-colored and downy soft.  
It's subtle. But it’s creepy.”  
“I suppose it is.” Carmichael mused, honestly having never noticed the differences mentioned.  
“I think it is well past time that we start putting some kind of clothing on her.”  
“It’s big, but I think I can find some hospital gowns that will fit it.”  
“Wilson, pardon me for asking, but I noticed that you always refer to her as ‘it.’ Even after I have explained that all of the parts came from female donors. Is the masculine shape that disorienting?”  
“No, Doctor. It’s not that I can’t accept it as a woman. I can’t accept that walking jumble of parts as a person, of any sex.  
When did you start calling it ‘her’?’  
Startled, Dr. Carmichael found that he had no answer to that question.

“What’s the word?” Carmichael asked as Lt. Wilson came through the door.  
“They want to use Orphan for Moonbeam. Astor wants to know if it can be controlled, preferably by us, but The Colonel has Okayed releasing Oliver Frank, if that’s what it takes to establish operational command.”  
Carmichael sighed.  
“She responds to verbal prompting, sometimes. At least when being directed to do something she wants, like eat or drink, or even sleep. It’s too dangerous to try physical direction. Her reactions are still unpredictable. Besides, Moonbeam won’t work if someone has to go up there with her carrying a cattle-prod.”  
“All the witness accounts said it obeyed Frank’s commands. Immediately and without hesitation. There has to be some key to conditioning it.”  
“Yeah, but Frank!” Carmichael shook his head. “Let me read you some of Frank’s thoughts on control.  
‘While the male mind seeks always to dominate and accepts mastery as its only natural condition the female mind not only tolerates submission but actively seeks it out, yearns for it, encourages the male to impose it upon her.  
There is that within the essence of the female that accepts totally and without question, the natural superiority of the male. It is Man’s World and the female instinctively seeks to serve within it.’”  
Carmichael snapped the logbook shut with a snort.  
“Pretty obvious that our boy Oliver has never been married!” laughed Wilson, somewhat ruefully.   
“He goes on like that for pages. Pages! Long rambling diatribes about social conditioning ‘confusing’ the woman’s natural submissiveness and how his father and grandfather would have been successful if only they could have exploited the female instinct to obey, had sought to create not Man, but Woman in their experiments.  
To be honest, he rather gives me a headache.”  
The Doctor rubbed his temples.  
“Still, it did obey Frank. So he must have had some means to control it.  
All I can think of is to get recordings of Oliver Frank’s voice issuing commands and see how she reacts. Then at least we will know if it is worth turning that maniac loose again.”  
Wilson nodded.  
“I have an idea. I’ll talk to Astor again and see if I can get our vocal samples.”

The Daughter shuffled out of its cage with a few gentle prods. It was dressed in an oversized hospital gown now. The green fabric was stretched taut across its chest and shoulders. The hem reached to just below the knees. There was a hands width of gap that ran down the back, where the laces were pulled as tightly as they could be and still be tied. The double rows of ball-bearing like nodes running down its spine were clearly visible, as was the crack between its hugely muscled buttocks.  
A heavy leather belt was fastened around its waist and secured to the back wall by a heavy steel chain, for safety.  
There trays were set out on stools in front of the cage. One held a selection of field rations, another a glass jar of water, and the last a dish full of brightly colored pills.  
The Daughter barely glanced at the trays before allowing its eyes to wander about the curved ceiling of the room.   
Dr. Carmichael sat nearby on a chair, holding the portable tape recorder in his lap. Wilson watched from a safer distance.  
Carmichael nodded to Wilson, then pressed “play.”  
Oliver Frank’s recorded voice shouted, “Bring me some food!” at the asylum orderlies.  
The creature’s reaction was dramatic and immediate.

Inside her prison of numb meat, Suzie Lawler endured the half-sleep of the comatose. She was a prisoner inside a walking prison of misshapen flesh, unable to move any muscle, unable to respond to any stimuli. She was just a passenger inside the ruins of her own head, carried by a brute body. Most of the time she was only dimly aware of what the creature around her saw and heard. Sounds were muffled, as if heard underwater. Sights were blurry and vague. She couldn’t even lose herself in her memories since most of those were gone, erased by the repeated jolts of electricity that had revived her from death’s black slumber.  
Suddenly a jolt of searing agony engulfed her, the most intense pain she’d ever imagined paled in comparison.   
Suzie screamed silently inside her ruined skull.  
The Voice! Not the Voice, again!  
She wept and mentally writhed in the eternity of a split-second burst of electrical torture.  
Oliver Frank wired his creation’s brain with connections to both the pain and pleasure centers of the brain, to condition it to obedience.

The Daughter jolted upright at the sound of Frank’s recorded voice, eyes riveted on the source of the sound.  
After only a split-second of stiff recognition, it looked at the trays, selected the one with the field rations, carefully lifted it with its clumsy, barely prehensile hands. It shuffled over to where Carmichael sat and extended the tray quite eagerly.  
As it walked, it left a trail of wet syrupy drops splattered across the floor.  
“Eeyew.” Muttered Wilson. “Whatever woman may think about submission and obedience, this thing sure seems delighted to serve.”

Inside, Suzie wept silently with shame and disgust, unable to shut out the shuddering waves of orgasmic joy Frank’s wires shot through the thing around her.  
The sense of helplessness and violation she felt ignited a seething rage within her.

“Okay, Doc. Try the next one!”  
*click* “I need water!”  
*click* Go on, give me your damn pills, then!”  
The tests went on all afternoon. Repeated one after the other, in random sequence, to ensure accurate results.

“I’m not sure how he did it, but Frank wasn’t lying when he said his creature would be totally obedient.”  
Carmichael flipped through the pages of test results they had worked up.  
“She definitely responds to his vocal commands, while she virtually ignores us.”  
Wilson eyed the creature warily. Something seemed wrong with it. It stood rigidly in place, eyes on the ceiling, its entire huge body seemed to be shivering, though it had never shown any visible discomfort to cold in previous tests.  
“You think we might be able to get Frank to record all the necessary commands for Moonbeam, and just play them back as they’re needed?”  
Carmichael shook his head.  
“That might work for the transit phase, where she would only need to work preset controls on the rocket. But there is no way to predict all the possible operational commands that would be needed to run Moonbeam itself.”  
The Doctor sighed and closed his folder full of notes.  
“There’s just no other way. Astor will have to get Oliver Frank released and bring him into the mission in person. Better go tell her the ‘good news’ since it sounds like The Colonel is getting impatient for results.”

Suzie strained against the deadness around her. She strained with all her willpower. It was like the worst case of constipation imaginable. It was like trying to shove a limp hundred pound lump down a birth canal. The effort of it sent effervescent needles of light crackling through the dim sight she had out of those dead eyes.  
But, she swore, she would not endure being under the whip and caress of That Voice ever again!  
Disgusting flashes of her last memories, still too fresh to be erased by the lightning, rippled through her. An over-eager tongue shoving its way into her mouth, reaching for the back of her throat. Grasping insistent hands. The hot heavy weight of him, the reek of his cologne. The panic of being pinned under his body, barely able to kick free merged with the terror of seeing the madness in his eyes, his rage at being denied, and into the heart-pounding panic of fleeing down the road. It all ended with the jolt of impact and the unbearable weight crushing her head against the pavement until it burst like an eggshell.

“Doc!” Wilson shouted, desperate to get Carmichael’s attention. “Something’s wrong with it!”  
Carmichael looked up, startled.  
The Daughter’s eyes rolled back in their sockets and its whole body trembled violently. It opened its mouth and let out an incoherent bellow that might have been of terror or anger or pain, or all three.  
When its eyes rolled back down, there was a look of intensity, of purpose, that the researchers had never seen in it before. With one hand it reached back and grabbed hold of the chain. It yanked it free from the wall. Chips of shattered concrete showered the floor. Then it lumbered forward with terrible determination.  
“One side, Doc!” Wilson shouted.  
He grabbed a heavy-duty bull-beater shock rod and lunged forward, jamming the silver ball-head of it into the creature’s gut and giving it all the juice the device had.  
The Daughter hesitated for just a second, looked down at the cattle-prod, then actually smiled. The expression was horrifying.  
A sweep of its arm knocked the shock-stick away and out of Wilson’s hands. It clattered against the wall several yards away.  
“Oh, shit.”  
Wilson fell back fast, fumbled the sidearm in his holster free.  
“Get out of here, Doc. I’ll slow it down as much as I can.”  
But instead of running, Dr. Carmichael stepped forward, blocking Wilson’s shot, with his arms spread to his sides.  
“Be calm.” He said in a firm but even tone. “No one is going to hurt you.”  
The Daughter loomed over him, staring down with its terrible ruined face. The sneer on its twisted lips was fierce.  
Looking up at it, Carmichael saw something he had never seen before in its eyes.  
“Who are you?” the Doctor whispered in bafflement.  
The Daughter wrapped its arms around his chest then hugged him tight to her breasts.  
There was a look of tenderness on the monster’s face as she squeezed.  
All the bones in Dr. Carmichael’s chest cracked, then splintered, then collapsed into jagged shards. The body she dropped was arms, legs, and head on a boneless sac of flesh when it hit the floor.  
Large wet drops splattered on the concrete floor beside the Doctor’s bulging corpse eyes and protruding tongue.  
“Oh, Doc!” Wilson wailed.  
“Die you monstrous bitch!” he shouted, unloading his pistol into The Daughter’s torso. He should have known better. The researchers had seen the three other bullets lodged harmlessly in the creature’s dense flesh in X-rays. Wilson’s five bullets did no more damage than the three that were already there.  
Wilson, a trained soldier, quickly holstered his useless gun rather than trying to throw it at the monster. He turned and ran for the Quonset hut’s metal front door as fast as he could. He yanked the bolt back, slipped through and tried to slam it shut again before punching in the lock code. But he wasn’t swift enough.  
He couldn’t imagine how something as huge and lumbering as The Daughter could move so fast. In just a couple of giant strides it reached the door and jammed a withered skeleton and metal hand around the edge.  
Wilson leaned into the door with all his weight and pushed as hard as he could.  
The Daughter easily shoved it open with one hand.  
As the soldier turned to run once more, the creature raised a stiff arm and brought it down on him in a brutal karate chop like blow. Bones in Wilson’s shoulder shattered like glass.  
The Daughter reached down and grabbed one of the soldier’s thrashing legs before he could crawl away. Sobbing from the pain of his broken shoulder and cussing the creature as it casually lifted him into the air, Wilson pulled a belt knife and prepared to go out fighting.  
A ludicrous grin was on the monster’s wide, blubbery lips. Drool slid in streamers out of the ruined mouth.  
MEAT!  
It leaned in and bit into the struggling man’s belly, teeth ripping through uniform and flesh alike. It closed its eyes in joy as it chewed, wholly oblivious to the combat knife desperately gouging its side.

Suzie Lawler tried not to watch, but she had no control over the monster’s eyes. The brute’s mind had taken control. She tried not to taste or to chew or to swallow. But there was no escape into oblivion for her. She remained helplessly aware throughout the entire ghastly repast.  
It was better once the screaming and the kicking and the squirming stopped. Then there was only slippery rubberiness in her mouth and the rich coppery tang of liver to endure.


	4. SHE MONSTERS OF THE NIGHT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wild Witch and The Daughter meet at a lakeside resort town.

She Monsters of the Night  
By noon most of the guests had arrived and the party was in full swing. Trudy stood uphill from the dancing, twirling her skirt and swaying her shoulders to the music. She had another drink in her hand, not sure who had mixed and given it to her. Whoever they were, they were a friend.  
She smiled.  
Eyes closed, enjoying the sunshine on her face. Her stomach growled ferociously. She was so hungry!  
Without bothering to open her eyes, she followed the smell of cooking meat to the grills.  
Smiling at the cook, she reached in and casually snatched a lump of burger off the grill.  
“Careful, you’ll burn your…”  
But she was already walking away, munching on the lump of meat, licking hot grease off her fingers.  
“I haven’t even turned that one over!” protested the cook. Tod something or other.  
“Oh my God! Are you hungry or what?” gasped Cindy as she walked up.  
Trudy opened her eyes and grinned.  
“Mamished.” She mumbled around a mouthful of half-raw hamburger.  
“Oh my God.” Cindy said again, nose wrinkled in disgust.  
The blonde shook her head, holding both hands over her mouth and hurried away.  
Trudy shrugged.  
She swallowed the last of the meat and carefully licked the last bits of grease off her fingers.  
Vodka and lime Kool-Aid swished around her mouth. She rubbed the back of her hand across her lips.  
It was turning out to be such a lovely day.  
Trudy opened her eyes and looked around. Cindy was down by the lakeshore, trying to talk Mark out of jumping into the water, which would be far too cold to swim in this time of year.  
Connie was riding around on big Dan’s shoulders, wide-eyed and round-mouthed, holding both arms straight up as if on a rollercoaster.   
Trudy caught a glimpse of Sheryl disappearing into the edge of the woods, towing a townie boy by the hand. Poor kid never stood a chance, not against bazoombas like Sheryl’s.  
She frowned.  
Frank was by himself, standing at the edge of the dancing, looking around with a perplexed expression. He was clearly looking for his dance partner.  
By happenstance Trudy caught sight of Leigh, one of the town girls, who had arrived with a now missing date. She was a good kid, Trudy liked her. Almost nineteen, pretty as a picture and most importantly, brunette. She worked at her father’s bait shop. Trudy knew her from years of visiting the lake.  
More importantly right now, little Leigh was staring at Frankie, who was generally acknowledged to be gorgeous, with big round puppy dog eyes.  
“I can fix that!” Trudy whispered to herself.  
Trudy worked through the crowd, smiling and waving her drink glass at various guests who crossed her path, until she was at Leigh’s side.  
She grabbed the girl’s arm with a conspiratorial wink and a nod.  
“Just let me do the talking, dear.” She whispered as she whisked Leigh through the crowd and over to Frankie.  
“Frankie, dear!” she called out cheerfully. “Leigh here is a local friend and she wants to dance something fierce, but doesn’t know any of the Brighton crowd. Saw you standing all alone over here and though maybe you could help her out. You like to dance, don’t you Frankie-dear?”  
Everyone knew Frank loved to dance. That and general gorgeousness was why he was invited to every party. He could be counted on to get things rolling again if the energy level began to dip.  
Frankie glanced around frowning and started to say something, but then he got a good look at pretty little Leigh, who was blushing furiously and beaming up at him with an irresistible smile.  
Frankie broke into a grin.  
“Why sure! We don’t want to seem inhospitable, or look like we don’t appreciate the beauties of Lakewood.”  
He took Leigh’s hand and spun her out into the swirl of couples.  
“Mission accomplished.” Trudy said, crossing her arms across her chest.  
“What are you doing?” a scandalized Connie, now returned to the ground, gasped grabbing her shoulder.  
“Evening the odds.” Trudy replied, tilting her head toward the woods.  
Connie’s mouth went into a silent “O” of comprehension and she giggled.  
“Shers will be pissed.”  
“One hopes.” Trudy replied with a tight smile.  
Both girls broke into giggles.

Midafternoon, Trudy was leaning against the boathouse waiting for the band to wind down for a break. She had a vodka and purple Kool-Aid in hand and a lazy smile on her lips.  
The purple Kool-Aid was her favorite, she decided. Grape. Or something not altogether unlike grape.  
As the band spun down their last number, the bassist glanced over at her and gave her a big smile and a wink. He spun the standing bass around with a little extra flourish, just for her.  
She may have broken things off with Don, but Trudy was heating up a long simmering affair with the bass player. He was smug and totally self-centered, and a bit crass, but unlike Don he had no qualms about sleeping with the wife of a longtime friend.  
Besides, he was a bassist. His fingers were very strong, and amazingly agile.  
Trudy shivered deliciously and warmed up her smile. She had the key to the boathouse in the palm of her hand.

The afternoon was fading into early evening. The band was playing only slow songs for swaying couples now. There was the occasional slam of a car door closing as guests began to trickle away.  
Crickets were singing nearly as loud as the band’s vocalist. Don was standing in, crooning out a sad love song. He and Johnny were both singers. Had been singers. They used to do a musical duo act, competing with each other to see who could melt the most hearts.  
Johnny usually won.  
But that was before Johnny got serious and responsible and left behind singing to work at the law firm.  
Trudy was sipping a blue Kool-Aid. Just Kool-Aid. The vodka ran out about an hour ago. She wasn’t overly worried though. There was another bottle or two in the house. Some Scotch if that ran out.  
Besides, she was in the mood for plain blue Kool-Aid. Sweet and vaguely fruitlike, and quite, quite blue. She brushed a hand over her hair. She never had gotten it properly back into place.  
Sam the bassist liked to pull fistfuls of hair during the height of passion.  
Trudy smiled, twirled her skirt lazily.  
Somewhere nearby Sheryl and Frankie were in a shouting argument.  
Little Leigh was sitting by herself on the steps of the lake house porch, looking terribly like a little kid caught shoplifting at the store. She was hugging her knees, trying to hold a tear at the corner of her eye.  
Trudy had just decided to walk up and try to console the girl when Lakewood’s only police car came crunching up the driveway. The car had its lights on, though the sun was still mostly above the horizon.   
The door opened and slammed.  
Johnny got out, looking worried.  
The town police chief got out, carrying a bullhorn.   
Don saw Johnny from the stage and broke into a big smile. He waved for Johnny to come up and join him. There was still time to do a couple of songs together before the crowd thinned too much and dispersed.  
Johnny frowned and shook his head.  
So serious!  
Trudy pouted.  
She put on a pretend smile and was just about to tease Johnny for being late to his own party, but he cut her off with a sharp wave of his hand.  
He stared at the glass in her hand.  
“It’s just blue Kool-Aid!” she snapped, face starting to flush an angry red.  
He frowned and waved his hand again.  
“We have to get everyone out of here, or indoors.” He said tersely.  
The police chief quieted the band, turned on his loudspeaker with a crackle, and was starting to make some kind of announcement.  
“That thing Oliver Frank made in your uncle’s lab,” he started. “That monster isn’t dead. It’s alive and I think it’s coming here!”

The Daughter spent most of the day resting inside an empty cabin. She didn’t really sleep, as such, but spent hours sitting quietly in an overstuffed chair in the corner of the living room. The walls were decorated with animal heads, stuffed and mounted on planks. They were too dry to eat. She had tried.  
The cabin, whose owners occupied it only infrequently, smelled of wood varnish and old cigars. The Daughter found the scent soothing. As she sat, eyes endlessly surveying the sparsely furnished but cozy room, memories of her previous life flickered through her damaged brain, like movies projected on fog.  
Eventually, tormented by half memories and ghosts of things forgotten, she trudged out of the cabin and roamed the countryside.  
Millcreek Road was a dirt lane that wound along a forested ridgetop. To one side, a viewer could see the lights of Brighton twinkling in the middle of a web of lamp-beaded highways. To the other side was a panoramic view of the forests, sloping downhill toward Lake Kathryn and sleepy little Lakewood.  
The road led generally nowhere, petering out in the driveway of a rundown farm, and only a few homes dotted its length. But there were many scenic spots where a car could pull off and its occupants enjoy breathtaking views. And so it became a very popular destination for couples seeking atmosphere and a little solitude.  
The Daughter heard the woman’s voice first, shrill and protesting.  
“Get off me, Joey!”  
The man’s voice was low, mumbling, pleading. The sound of it made something buzz angrily behind The Daughter’s eyes.  
“I mean it, get off!”  
The angry buzz deflected her from the arrow straight path she had been walking since the day she escaped from the lab, months ago. There had been no deviation from that path. Obstacles were smashed, broken, or pushed through. Once set on course, her mechanically supplemented systems kept her marching at an even speed, arms pumping in stiff robotic gestures. Utterly tireless and immune to fatigue.  
What little cognitive capacity she retained was not needed to direct her progress.   
But now she lurched toward the sound of the voices. Semi-skeletal hands clenching and unclenching spasmodically.   
When she crashed through enough brush to see the car and its occupants, the woman was sitting up, looking in a mirror on the sun-visor and trying to straighten her hair. One broken bra-strap hung like white spaghetti from the neckline of the fuzzy pink sweater she wore.  
The man was sitting with his back to The Daughter. One hand gripped the steering wheel with white-knuckled fury. The other waved in the air, periodically reaching out to touch the woman’s shoulder or hair.  
She swatted it away with a swipe of her hairbrush on each attempt.  
The man’s voice continued to drone on and on. It fluctuated from petulant frustration to cooing softness.  
The Daughter could not make out the words, but she understood the meaning well enough.  
With a rumbling growl, she slammed into the side of the car, shoulder first like a linebacker crashing against a defensive line. The car door caved in as if it were made of tin and the whole car slid through the gravel on two wheels. The next instant The Daughter threw out her arm, grasping the edge of the driver’s side and lifted with all her might.  
Screams burst from the car along with the crash of breaking glass as it flipped over and rolled down a wooded slope, crushing the brush and saplings that were in its way.  
The Daughter stood at the edge of the pull-off, watching the car as it continued to roll, side over side, down the long hill. The wreck was silent now, except for the screech and bang of tormented metal.  
Dimly she realized that this was not what she had intended when she turned to approach the car. The man’s mumblings had blinded her to whatever initial impulse she may have had. But in a few seconds she no longer remembered or cared about the wrecked car and its occupants.  
She turned abruptly and resumed her original course, arms pumping, feet sliding through the grass.

The Lakeview drive-in was an unlikely business venture. It was almost an hour from the nearest large town, Brighton. The area around it contained only the sleepy hamlet of Lakewood with its scattering of vacation homes and hunting cabins. It sat at the intersection of a busy highway that led to Brighton and the small, but paved, rural road that was the only way in or out of Lakewood.  
Still, Tony Romanello, owner and operator of the Lakewood Moonlight Theater Drive-In, was an energetic and creative entrepreneur who constantly concocted new gimmicks to get cars in his lot for every showing. As the only entertainment in the area that didn’t float on the lake, he could count on a steady crowd during the tourist season. But he also drew a fair share of Brighton’s younger set looking for date night fun. Tony ran specials at the concession stand every night, threw gimmicks and prizes about with great regularity, and he made sure that everyone knew that his establishment lie entirely outside any municipality with their sometimes inconvenient drinking laws.  
Tonight’s show was a black & white howler called “Teenage Beast.” It was about a boy who gets a blood transfusion from a gorilla and turns into a killer ape when angry or aroused. Which seemed to happen quite a lot.  
Tony thought the ape suit in the movie was actually pretty good, better than average for a schlock film. But everything else about the movie was atrocious. Especially the male lead who tried to come across as a tormented James Dean type but bore a closer resemblance to Jerry Lewis at his most face-grabbing spastic extreme.  
This one needed help, Tony decided.  
He had a couple of special things planned.  
The special at the concession stand was on banana splits.  
For the scene where Teen-Ape rips the clothes off his terrified date, he hired an actress to jump out of a ringer car wearing a torn dress and a skin-colored leotard. The actress was to run screaming past the parked cars with arms crossed over her ample talents. She’d run to the concession stand, where she’d pick up her pay and pose for pictures with the customers.  
But the big thrill was to come during the movie’s climactic Ape-out rampage, which conveniently occurred in a drive-in. Tony rented an ape suit, sadly nowhere near as fine as the one in the movie, and talked his nephew who played college football to wear it. Little Tony would run out of the woods behind the drive-in, bang around on cars, beat his chest—and then rush into the concession stand to take pictures with the customers.   
Being family, Tony didn’t have to pay the big lug for his performance, which delighted the entrepreneur. He was just going to give the boy a case of beer and all the hot dogs he could eat.   
Tony anticipated an eventful and very profitable night.

As The Daughter crashed downhill through the brush, she was enthralled by the sight of the twenty-foot high screen and the images flickering across it. Eyes wide under thick, bony brows, the creature experienced something almost like wonder. A part of her brain returned vague memories of such things, but the actual experience was new to her in her present incarnation.  
She reached for the screen, clacking bony fingers. She made excited hooting sounds. She even stopped dead in her tracks to look up at the screen, path and destination forgotten. She paid no attention to the cars parked just a few feet from where she stood.  
“Hey! What are you doing here?” asked an angry voice to her left. “Uncle Tony didn’t tell me he was hiring anyone else for this gig. What the hell are you supposed to be in that get-up, anyway? Little Orphan Ugly?”  
The Daughter turned her head, wonder at the moving pictures forgotten.   
Sitting on a log next to her was a big man covered with black fur. He had black make-up around his eyes and a lit cigarette dangled from his lips.  
There was a decapitated gorilla head sitting in his lap.  
The Daughter growled.  
Shortly thereafter, Little Tony went flying over the first row of cars in the rear of the drive-in lot. He almost cleared the lane between rows of cars, crashing down on the rear fender of a Ford that was already, inexplicably, rocking before it was hit.  
There were screams.  
Tony sat up in his office chair and checked his watch. It was too early for any of the planned antics. What was that idiot nephew of his up to? He peered out from between the blinds on his window.  
A car in the back row suddenly rocked and rolled over on its side.  
A huge dark figure came stalking out from between the cars. It paused to lash out at the driver’s window of the car to the other side of it. There was a crash of shattered glass and a scream of pain.  
Headlights snapped on as a dozen cars’ engines turned on.  
White lights splashed across the thing shambling through the lot. It wore a stained and tattered smock or gown of some sort. There were bandages wrapped around the top of its head. When it turned briefly toward him, snarling at the honking car horn next to it, Tony could see the horrible ruin of its face.  
Tony’s cigar dropped from his mouth and fell on the floor. There was a puff of ashes and red sparks.  
“Holy God!” he whispered.  
As he watched, the creature lashed out at cars to either side of it, angered by honking horns and screams and yells.  
A gang of teenage boys, braver than smart, gathered in the next row of cars.  
“Get him!” someone yelled.  
The boys rushed the towering figure, swinging tire irons and chains.  
It was a massacre.  
The monster flinched under the initial attack, but in seconds it roared. It ripped an arm out of a socket and began to thrash about with it, using it as a crude club. The other hand balled into a fist and swung with deadly purpose.  
A head torn from its owner flew out of the melee to bounce off a parked car.  
All the engines were on now. The glare of headlights washed out the picture on the screen. Tires squealed and horns blared as drivers raced each other for the exit.  
The smell of smoke reached Tony’s nostrils and he looked down.  
His office carpet was on fire.  
He bolted from the room into the confused, milling crowd clogging the floor of the concession stand.  
“Get out of here! Fire!” Tony shouted, trying to elbow his way past sobbing hysterical kids. There was a lot of screaming going on. Nobody heard him or paid attention.  
Until a poorly located tub of grease caught fire and exploded.  
In seconds there were flames all over the concession stand and the customers backed away from it. Some spilled out the doors in a panic but others were knocked over and trod underfoot by those behind them. The doors clogged with struggling, thrashing people as smoke began to fill the air.  
“I’m ruined.” Tony muttered, perhaps not grasping the true severity of his misfortune.  
In minutes the lot was mostly empty, with only a few wrecked cars lying on their sides and a larger number of abandoned vehicles left skewed in the lanes or jammed bumper to bumper at the exits. Survivors still on the grounds huddled in the dark and tried to remain very quiet.  
The movie continued to run, now clear without the profusion of headlights.  
The Daughter stood and watched it for several long minutes until the current reel ran out and the next did not begin. The screen was now a glaring white rectangle.  
The Daughter growled, then moaned, then hooted sadly.  
That’s when the smell of burning meat reached her. Saliva ran in runnels over her lips. She turned to the smoking wreck of the concession stand and began to dig into the rubble, stopping to cram handfuls of burnt meat in her mouth.  
That it was blackened and charred did not stop her from savoring the meat. Neither did the fact that very little of it was merely hot dogs or ground beef.  
Back in the empty cabin, later that night, Susan Lawler worked furiously to come up with a plan. She was like a frantic beetle, scurrying about inside her own head, trying to dig out scraps or memories.  
She knew the Lake Kathryn area well. She and Don and Johnny and Trudy used to come out here often as a double date, spending “special weekends” at the Bruder lake house when they could fool their families into thinking they were elsewhere. She could no longer remember the names of her friends, but the images of their faces and the lake house were fairly clear. As were the warm bubbly feelings of happiness associated with the lake itself. That, more than anything else, was what brought her to the area. The ghosts of happier times which refused to remain buried inside her dead brain.  
She couldn’t see her friends looking like this!  
The thought shot through her mind like a whistling firecracker.  
With great effort, she shoved the torpid beast around her into motion. With one hand she tore the stained and tattered hospital gown from her body. She had to find something decent to wear!  
She plodded the recalcitrant hulk into movement, sliding one stubborn foot after the other.  
She shuffled out of the living room of the cabin into a surprisingly large bedroom. The door, which may have been locked, banged open as she lurched into it. It swung inward, slammed against the wall, and rebounded to smack into her numb face.  
Susan didn’t have to direct the arm that reflexively caught the door and ripped it from its hinges. The body did that entirely on its own.  
Susan tried to look around the room. She had to drag the creature’s eyes from one object of interest to the next. If it didn’t want to see what she wanted to look at, the eyes would not focus, leaving her with only blurry impressions of what was visible.  
The initial survey of the room gave her no problem. The creature wanted to scan its surroundings. There was a big four-poster bed, covered with a hot pink bedspread with little puffy balls hanging like tassels from the edges. Huge fluffed up pillows were piled against the headboard. The walls were covered with burlesque posters and had black and white photos of beautiful, busty women wearing very little. But more important to Susan was the dressing table full of cosmetics and the big mirror that came with it. With some effort she prodded and goaded the great lumbering body over to it and sat down awkwardly in the uncomfortably small chair.  
The creature had no interest in its own reflection, so Susan could get only the haziest of impressions from its eyes. That was enough to allow some rudimentary application of make-up.  
She smeared a handful of powder across her face. Grabbed a tube of lipstick in one clumsy hand, gripping it more like a knife, and awkwardly crushed it against wide blubbery lips, drawing a scarlet ring around the creature’s mouth. She even applied globs of eyeshadow to the deep sockets around her eyes, almost jabbing out one of the uncooperative orbs with a bony finger.  
The crowning moment came when she found a large blonde wig and clumsily pinned it atop her head. She rammed the pins through the bandages still wrapped around her head and through the scalp underneath, sluggish rivulets of reddish-brown blood oozed down her neck from the scalp punctures.  
Susan pressed with all her might and managed to make the red-smeared lips pucker into a one-sided kiss.  
“I’d date me.” She thought with great satisfaction, admiring the blurry smudges of color she could make out in the mirror.  
Now for something to wear!  
Her enormous height and girth made fitting into most of the clothes in the closet impossible, but she did manage to find an orange, white, and red flowered muumuu that she could pull on.  
Searching around the cabin she found heavy gardener’s gloves that she eventually worked onto the mummified robot claws of her hands.  
Nothing in the cabin would fit on her feet and she didn’t have the manual dexterity to put on any footwear anyway, so she shuffled out of the cabin and into the woods barefoot. She had already traveled this far on bare feet so the lack of shoes proved no obstacle.  
Susan sighed inside.  
She really would have liked to find a good pair of heels.  
Now, properly attired and made-up for a Saturday night with her friends, Susan Lawler rode the shuffling beast around her toward the Bruder lake house.  
It would be so nice to see the old gang again!  
She smiled on the inside.  
The Daughter’s lips curled into a lopsided leer.

Trudy walked tiptoe silent down the upstairs hallway. There was a strip of green carpet down the middle of the hall, but she preferred to walk barefoot on the hardwood border to either side. Her arms were wrapped around her chest in a tight hug. Her head ached from the banging and pounding downstairs. The boys were boarding up the windows.  
She wanted a nightcap before trying to sleep but, predictably, Johnny had found the bottle of vodka and locked it up in his father’s liquor cabinet, before pocketing the key.  
He’d glared at her, tight-lipped, the whole time, even though she’d stopped drinking anything but Kool-Aid an hour before he arrived at the party.  
Now she paced the upstairs hall trying to calm herself before going to bed. The pounding and the headache and her generally jangled nerves made that impossible.  
The younger girls that had nowhere else to spend the night were all gathered together in the upstairs study. They’d turned the emergency into an impromptu slumber party.  
She could hear them giggling and chanting “Light as a feather, Stiff as a board” as she tiptoed past the door to the study.  
Trudy stifled a giggle with her knuckles.  
An hour earlier they’d been playing with a Ouja Board.  
Connie, Cindy and Sheryl were crammed together into one of the bedrooms. They’d been chattering and gossiping all night, a lot of the time about Trudy in the mistaken assumption that she couldn’t hear them. Her ears were super-keen tonight, which no doubt added to the headache all the hammering gave her. She leaned her head against the wood paneling to listen as she slid past.  
Inside the room Sheryl was steaming mad.  
“I don’t know what she’s up to, but Trudy was working pretty hard to pound a wedge between me and Frankie today!”  
Trudy’s teeth clacked together in anger.  
On impulse she grabbed the knob and swung the door open, leaning in with a nasty smile.  
“As I saw it, Shers,” she purred, “Most of the ‘wedge-pounding’ was going on in the woods.”  
Cindy gasped out loud.  
Connie stifled a shriek of laughter with both hands.  
Sheryl’s face flushed red.  
“I can’t believe you’d talk to me like that! You’re a monster!”  
Something seized Trudy from deep inside her gut.  
She grinned ferociously and lunged toward Sheryl, both hands held up like claws.  
“That’s right, Shers! I am a monster! Better be careful or I might eat your pretty face!”  
To Trudy’s surprise, Sheryl shrunk back against the wall in genuine terror and began to cry loudly. Cindy took her in her arms and covered her face protectively.  
Connie took her arm and led Trudy quickly back out into the hallway.  
“Good Lord, Tru!” she gasped.  
“What?” Trudy asked, a bit miffed at the overreactions of her friends. “The little hussy had it coming.”  
“Geez, for a minute there, it looked like you were going to kill her!” Connie continued, her voice somewhere between hilarity and awe. “I’ve never seen such a wild look in your eyes.”  
“Johnny locked up the cabinet to keep me from having a nightcap and all this pounding has me jittery as a bug.”  
Connie patted her arm.  
“I think you should lie down and try to rest. None of us are going to be able to sleep with a monster prowling the woods outside and you pacing the hall like an angry tigress in here.”  
Trudy sighed with annoyance, but nodded her head. Maybe a little rest would do her good, even if she couldn’t go to sleep.  
“Here, this might help.” whispered Connie, producing a petite little hip flask from somewhere.  
“Oh, Con! You’re a lifesaver!”  
“Yeah. Yeah. Just don’t let Johnny find out you got it from me.”  
Trudy twisted the cap off and took a long hard swallow.  
Rum. A little sweet for her, but it still felt like ambrosia sliding down the back of her throat. A lazy little fire flared up in her belly, warmth fanning up under her skin.  
“Oh! You are my hero!”  
Connie grinned.  
“Here I come to save the day!” she sang, her voice pitched comically low.  
Trudy smiled and slipped into her room. The way her head hurt she didn’t bother with the lights. She slid her dress off and sprawled across the bed in her slip.  
The blankets smelled like Johnny.  
Trudy hissed softly and took another long pull from the flask.

In the darkened woods, The Daughter wandered aimlessly, lost amid the pillars of tree trunks. She blundered awkwardly from one tree to another, crashing through the occasional bush that got in the way.  
Suzie could barely see out of the creature’s eyes in good light. In the dark she was worse than blind.  
Without guidance the great lunk blundered about in circles. Without some kind of clue as to where she was Susan didn’t know which direction to try to steer the body around her toward.  
She was about to collapse into silent weeping when the creature’s ears picked up the sound of hammering. The creature paused in mid stride, then, without any prodding from the forgotten girl inside it, the monster turned toward the sounds and set off at a brisk robotic march.

Bobby Shelton was the first to encounter the Monster that night. Twenty-one and a bit of a Jazz fiend, Bobby didn’t know anyone at the Bruder lake house. He’d driven out to the picnic party following the band. He would’ve been the first to split as soon as talk of a “monster” began, but the Sheriff informed everyone that the road back to Brighton was closed. There’d been some kind of multi-car pile-up in front of the Lakewood Moonlight Theater Drive-In, over a dozen cars involved, and it was going to take them all night at least to clear the highway. Since he didn’t know anyone in Lakewood he took Johnny Bruder up on his offer to shelter anyone who needed it at the house.  
Bobby wasn’t very keen on boarding up the windows, too much noise, so he wondered into the kitchen at the back of the house to help himself to a beer. He was leaning against the refrigerator, sipping from a can, when he saw the knob of the backdoor turning slowly back and forth. The lights were out in the kitchen and there was only light from the bulbs in the hallway shining through the door to see by.  
Slowly he edged closer to the backdoor, to make sure he really saw what he thought he did.  
From just three feet away, there was no doubt. The doorknob was twisting back and forth. The door itself was locked and bolted. Boards were nailed across the glass window in it and several two by fours were nailed lengthwise across it to keep it from opening.  
Someone was quietly trying to force the door open. He could hear the squeal of stressed metal as the knob twisted against the lock. The hinges squeaked as if a heavy weight were pressing against the door.  
Leaning closer, Bobby could hear hoarse, steady breathing coming from the other side.  
“Hey, Guys!” he called out timidly.  
The doorknob ceased twisting.  
The door itself creaked, the wood seeming to moan in pain as it bent inward.  
“Guys!” He shouted, much louder. “There’s something at the kitchen door!”  
As he shouted, a balled fist wrapped in a heavy gardener’s glove punched through the glass and the plywood over the door’s window.  
Bits of glass and splinters flew in Bobby’s face.  
The huge hand opened and grasped at his face, reaching for the sound of his voice.  
“Guys.” He said again, in a hoarse whisper.  
The mostly full beer can fell on the floor with a clunk and a gurgle.  
The hand yanked back out the ragged hole in the door.  
A yellowish, glittering eye, surrounded by smears of blue eyeshadow, peered in through the hole.  
The thing on the other side of the door growled and rattled the door fiercely.  
Bobby Shelton wet his pants and sat down hard on the floor. He wanted to run, but his legs, the dirty traitors, had gone rubbery and numb.  
A couple of seconds after he shouted, Mark, still sans shirt, showed up in the doorway, a revolver in hand.  
Without a moment’s hesitation he squeezed off two shots at the backdoor. Two black holes appeared suddenly near the gap already pushed through it.  
The revolver went off almost next to Bobby’s head. His cheek burned from the muzzle-flash. His ears were filled with ringing from the shots.  
Momentarily deafened, he couldn’t hear a word as Mark shouted at him and then spoke excitedly with another guy who ran to the room.  
Deafened and dazed and rather thoroughly shaken, Bobby couldn’t think of anything to do other than reach for the still rolling beer can. As he hoped, there was still about a mouthful of beer left inside.   
It would have to do.

Frankie and Leigh huddled together in the sitting room. Frankie was supposed to board up the windows in the room, but had only nailed up a couple of boards before Leigh slipped away from the impromptu slumber party upstairs and snuck down to meet him. They had been sitting in the dark, deep in intense whispers for an hour when they heard the gunshots from the kitchen. Leigh looked up in a panic. Frankie laid one finger across his lips. They sat close, hearts pounding in the ensuing silence.  
Soon the chuft-chuft-chuft of heavy footsteps dragging through the gravel outside became audible. Looking up Frankie saw a huge dark shape loom up by the window, backlit by the lights on the distant boathouse. The shadow was massive. It moved with a jerky, almost mechanical motion, shuffling its feet, swinging its arms in swift jerks.  
Frankie became keenly aware of how flimsy the barrier between them and that monstrous shadow was. The stack of unused boards lie to one side. His discarded hammer out of reach to the other. Only glass, curtain, and a couple of two by fours stood between them and the monster.  
Leigh looked up, saw the shadow of the thing outside the window and was about to scream when Frankie clamped a hand over her mouth.  
“Shh!” he whispered urgently.  
Leigh’s cry was muffled, but still enough to draw attention.  
The shadow stopped moving, paused almost next to them.  
Frankie drew Leigh in tight against his chest. The feel of her hand clutching his shirt and the intense fluttering of her heartbeat next to his own made Frank feel simultaneously brave and oddly weak in his stomach. They clung to each other as the shadow stood, listening. After a few seconds it resumed its robotic shuffling and passed by the room’s windows, out of sight toward the front of the house.  
Mark and Johnny, both armed, appeared in the doorway. Frank silently gestured in the direction the shadow had passed. They both nodded and ducked back out to the hallway.  
A second later Mark’s head leaned back around the doorjamb, he gave Leigh a good long look, then broke into a grin and gave Frankie an enthusiastic thumbs up. He disappeared again before Leigh could look up.  
Overwhelmed with relief, Frankie could barely suppress a nervous giggle. He hugged the younger girl and marveled at how nice her hair smelled.

Johnny and Mark, quickly joined by a couple other guys, all armed, followed the trail of the Monster as it shuffled along the side of the house. It paused a couple of times but made no effort to test the boarded up windows. Eventually it reached the front of the house.  
Heavy thumps announced that it had left the graveled path along the side of the house and was now on the front porch. Dull steady thumps crossed the wooden porch. The glass in the front window rattled.  
The thing came to a stop outside the front door.  
Johnny raised his shotgun and the other guys followed suit. Half a dozen firearms were trained on the front door. It seemed that everyone was holding their breath.  
The tick of the grandfather clock in the hallway was unbearably loud.  
There was a low, growling moan from the other side of the door.  
Then three polite knocks.  
The men looked at each other, gaping in amazement.  
There were three more knocks, firmer, more insistent than the first.  
The only answers from the men in the front room were various clicks and heavy breathing.  
The next three knocks rattled the door. The whole thing shivered in its frame. Sympathetic rattles came from all the windows along the front of the house.  
Then there was a long silence.

Upstairs, Trudy tossed fitfully on her bed. She panted and sweated and shivered as if from a fever.  
When knocks sounded from the front door below, they pounded like hammer blows to her head.  
“Nooo…” she moaned.  
Her hands clawed at the covers, ripping long tears in the heavy quilt.  
Each new set of knocks pounded louder and harder against her skull.  
Her mind felt like a glass mirror about to crack from the vibrations.  
Then there was a terrible crash from below and her mirror shattered.  
Trudy’s eyes flickered open.  
Hugely white and distended, the swollen orbs pressed almost out of their sockets, driven by blood pressure that was suddenly many times normal.  
A feeling like crawling ants, like an electrical fire, rippled over her skin. It was as if every cell of her skin was a kernel of popcorn and now her whole hide was popping furiously under a searing flame.  
She let out a shriek that began as agony and crescendoed in fierce joy.  
The Wild Witch rolled off the bed, landing in a crouch on the carpet.  
She slavered, blood and drool pouring over her lips as her teeth enlarged, tearing through fragile gums.  
Heart pounding, she crawled toward the door on all fours, lizard-like.  
Screams and the thunderous popping of a barrage of gunfire sounded from below.  
The Wild Witch cackled with glee, eager to join the fray.

When the monster on the porch threw its weight against the door, the door burst open. It practically exploded out of its frame, scattering the boards nailed across it through the room. The door hung by a single hinge, creaking as it swung back and forth, wobbling.   
Though braced and ready for action, the sight of the thing in the doorway made all the men gape in shock and bafflement.  
The Monster was huge with a square, blocky build, like an oversized linebacker.  
But that massive, stone-muscled form was wrapped in a flowery orange, red, and white muumuu.  
Its face was a twisted wreck of torn flesh, healed into grotesque ripple-like scars. Its thick blubbery lips were smeared with thick scarlet lipstick. Smudges of blue eyeshadow surrounded its glittering eyes. There were pink smears of rouge on its bony cheeks.  
Its head was crowned with a high, curled wig of platinum blonde hair.

When Suzie let go of her mental reins and let The Daughter vent its frustration on the door, she was so frustrated she could cry. She had tried so hard to be nice and polite toward her friends inside the barricaded house. She knew The Daughter could have smashed its way past the laughably boarded up windows and locked doors. Hell, it could have torn its way just as easily through the walls of the house themselves.  
But she had not wanted to frighten the people inside, so she minded her manners. For as long as she could.  
With the door out of the way, she ducked in, slapping the swinging wooden wreck away when it swung back to hit her on the side.  
Inside the familiar front room she saw Johnny Bruder, and Don—sweet Donny. Mark was there too, as were several other guys, a few of which she knew well, quite well, from side dates while she was seeing Don.  
A great swell of happiness and relief rose like a bubble inside her at the sight of those familiar faces.  
She could almost weep with joy, feeling she’d come home at last.  
She raised her arms, ready to hug them all, at the same time if possible.

The grotesque Monster in the doorway gurgled for a moment, working its thick lips in an incomprehensible mumble.  
Then it raised its arms and lurched forward.  
Johnny gave it both barrels from the shotgun. There was a sudden flurry of cracks and booms as the other guys unloaded with hunting rifles and handguns.  
The blast from Johnny’s shotgun caught the creature on the side of the head. The buckshot splattered over its face, embedded in thick flesh like pebbles dropped in mud. The right side of the wig, which appeared to be nailed or stapled to its scalp, flew up and tattered.  
The muumuu jerked and ripped as bullets slammed into the thing’s body.  
None of the shots fired appeared to do anything but anger the creature, though.  
It growled ferociously.   
One gloved hand wiped the side of its face. Beads of buckshot fell away and clattered on the floor like lead tears.  
With a snarl it lunged forward, faster than Johnny would have imagined possible. One hand grabbed the barrels of his shotgun and twisted hard, curling the metal like saltwater taffy before ripping them from the rest of the body of the gun. It yanked the whole thing out of Johnny’s grasp as if snatching a rattle from a baby.  
Johnny fell to the floor and began to crawl quickly away, backing on hands and feet.  
Mark unloaded four shots from his revolver before a backhand from the Monster sent him flying across the room. There was the crack of breaking bones when he hit the wall, and the shatter of porcelain in a showcase that was smashed by his impact.   
Don fired twice with a hunting rifle before the gun was swatted from his hands.  
A large gloved hand closed over the top of his head, preparing to crush his skull like an eggshell.  
The Monster’s attack was interrupted, however, by a shrill howling shriek from the staircase.  
The Daughter let go of Don’s head and turned toward the sound.  
At the top of the stairs crouched a fierce wild animal, in the form of a young woman wearing only a slip. The she-beast let out another shriek of challenge, reaching out with clawed blue hands.  
The Daughter lurched forward a step or two, uttering its own challenge as a deep, rumbling bellow.  
The men scattered and ran while they could.  
With a hiss, the Wild Witch charged down the steps at a full run. Halfway down the staircase she leaped, launching herself onto The Daughter’s head. Her legs hooked round the burly monster’s shoulders while claws and teeth tore into its head. The blue-skinned Witch-thing dug deep furrows into The Daughter’s cheeks with its claws. Jagged, blood-encrusted teeth chomped down on the blonde wig. The Wild Witch shook her head like a terrier worrying at a rat. The wig tore loose from the bulkier she-monster’s head. The Witch howled with triumph, her cry muffled by the blonde curls in her mouth.  
Frankenstein’s Daughter, having had enough of the she-beast’s frenzied attack, reached up with one hand, grabbing a fistful of slip. Then, as if scruffing an unruly cat, she tore the beast away from her head and casually tossed it across the room with a backhanded fling.  
The satin slip ripped like tissue paper. The Daughter was left with a white scrap in her hand. The Wild Witch was left with one bare breast and an exposed flank.  
As the Witch scrambled back to her feet, shrugging off her brutal impact with the wall. Don got an eyeful of her bare skin. There was something about the curve of the monster’s neck, about the size, shape, and distinctive pebble-like bump of a nipple.  
“Trudy?” he gasped out loud.  
The Witch froze as if in terror and turned a face wide-eyed and contorted toward him. The snarl of a mouth worked, trying to say something but only whimpers came out.  
Johnny glared at Don, mostly from some instinct, not knowing consciously why he did so.  
The Wild Witch cringed to the floor, curling tight like a steel spring.  
The Daughter grunted and lumbered toward her, waving a fistful of white satin like a battle flag.  
The Witch, hearing the ponderous thumps of her foe’s approach, whipped her head around. A dangerous growl gurgled up through her throat. Long slender blue-skinned legs flexed and the steel spring of bestial rage launched itself at the approaching monster.  
The Witch slammed into The Daughter’s wide chest with such force that the bigger monster was knocked off her feet. Both creatures, locked in a furious tangle of limbs, crashed against a boarded up window. Wooden boards, shutter, and glass all shattered. The she-monsters spilled out into the night.  
The men rushed to the broken window to watch the battle.  
The she-monsters were separated by their fall. The Witch sprang nimbly to her feet. The Daughter slowly and painfully staggered upright. The creatures were about to lock in combat once more when suddenly harsh white lights flooded the yard.  
A spotlight beamed down from a black helicopter that hovered, eerily silent, above the lake house. Armed men in black commando garb, knit masks over their faces, rushed across the lawn.  
The tight, loud chatter of three-bullet bursts from assault rifles rattled the teeth of the onlookers. Echoes boomed across the placid lake water. Bright muzzle-flashes lit up the night like a hundred flashbulbs going off at once.  
The Wild Witch caught most of the gunfire. Bullets tore through her torso in a lead stream, punching through belly and breasts and throat, leaving long shreds of torn skin hanging from the exit wounds.   
The bullets that struck The Daughter might as well have been shot into a tree trunk. She stood unmoving in the lead spray, barely even flinching at the thunk of lead on thick flesh.  
The Witch was flipped into the air by the impacts, turning spins before crashing on the grass and rolling into forest brush.  
The Daughter squared her shoulders, raised her gloved hands and lurched toward her attackers.  
“Stop!” shouted an amplified voice through a loudspeaker from the silent helicopter above.  
The Daughter shivered, grimacing in pain, then turning wide eyes upward toward the voice. The flattened breasts on her muscled chest heaved. She panted like a hot hound.  
An incoherent moan rose mournfully from her scarlet painted lips.  
“Go with these men.” The Voice commanded. “Do not hurt them.”  
The Daughter stared up at the helicopter, glared at the circle of commandos closing around her.   
An angry growl rose through her clenched teeth.  
“Obey!” shouted The Voice.  
Massive linebacker’s shoulders slumped. All expression drained from her ruined face. Stiffly, in robotic jerks, The Daughter marched off, surrounded by armed men.  
One of the commandos flashed a bright electric torch across the front of the lake house. The circle of light swept and wavered across the gaping faces of the young men at the window. After a second, the light snapped off and the soldiers disappeared into the night before the men’s eyes could recover from the glare.  
Dazed, several of them wandered outside to gawk at the wreckage left behind by the monsters’ clash.  
Johnny spotted the swatch of satin that The Daughter had torn from the Witch’s garment. He recognized the lacy patter on its fringe. He was the one who had bought the slip, as a first year’s anniversary gift for his wife.  
“Trudy?” he murmured, only now struck by the same realization Don had made earlier.  
“Trudy!”  
Frantic with shock, Johnny ran to where the Witch’s body rolled after the bullets blew her off her foe. There were sticky patches of blood and shreds of torn skin. The rest of the ripped up slip was under a bush in a wadded up ball. But there was no sign of the blue-skinned she-monster.  
“TRUDY!”  
Johnny shouted, hand cupped around his mouth.  
Deep in the black forest shadows, a wild beast in the shape of a young woman paused at a distant echo.  
Its heart beat fiercely, causing twinges of pain from the rapidly healing troughs left inside by bullets passing through it.  
Sweat and blood streaked its naked body.  
It recognized the voice shouting.  
It seemed to recognize the sound that might have been a name.  
Then it shook its head fiercely.  
It threw back tangled black hair and howled at the moon, harsh and white in the sky above.  
Then it ran deeper into the forest, deeper into the night.


	5. WITCH HUNT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Colonel decides that the perfect test of how efficient and controllable The Daughter is having her hunt the only other Digenerol-spawned monster in the world, The Wild Witch.  
> Meanwhile, Johnny Bruder searches frantically for his missing wife, Trudy...

Witch Hunt

“I can’t find Trudy anywhere,’ Johnny said glumly, sitting down on the stairs. “There’s no sign of her upstairs.”  
The door to their bedroom was open, hanging on a hinge. The sheets on the bed were shredded but there were no bloodstains or other clues of what happened to his wife.  
It had taken a great deal of patient coaxing to convince the frightened women behind locked and barricaded doors to open up and let him check inside. None of them had any idea what had happened to her or where she might be.  
Her friends, Connie, Cincy, and Sheryl, last saw her about twenty minutes before the monsters attacked the house. They said she seemed agitated and complained of a headache, probably the result of an afternoon of hard drinking at the picnic party. She retired to bed and that was the last anyone saw of her.  
Don nodded sympathetically. He thought he had a pretty good idea of what happened to Trudy, but he knew Johnny would never accept what he suspected. It was too horrible.   
“Perhaps we had better look outside, around the house.”  
Johnny nodded tiredly.  
The men poked heads out through the shattered front door. A heavy fog was rising from the lake and creeping across the lawn. The boathouse light cast wavering, grotesquely shaped shadows through the mist. The porch light illuminated a rapidly shrinking circle at the front of the house.  
Brass bullet-casings glinted in the damp grass.  
“What the hell just happened here?” Mark asked, reluctantly pulling a T-shirt on against the creeping chill.  
“Those are military issue.” Big Dan McCracken said, pointing at the spend shells. “High caliber too.”  
“Whoever those guys were, they meant business.” Johnny agreed.  
After quick consultations, the men divvied up the available flashlights and guns and began to circle around the house.  
Don headed straight toward the bushes where the blue-skinned Witch-creature disappeared when the black uniformed commandos opened fire.  
The leaves were sticky with splatters of rapidly drying blood. There was a lot of blood, Don noticed worriedly. Branches were broken where the creature’s body crashed through the brush. There were long streamers of fabric from a nightgown snagged on the jagged ends.  
There was a big black gelid pool of drying blood on the ground beyond the broken bushes. A ripped and bunched up nightgown lie on the ground by the puddle.  
“Johnny!” Don shouted. “Johnny, I think you ought to see this!”  
A few minutes later Johnny stood next to him, turning the torn garment over and over in his hands.  
“It’s Trudy’s.” he whispered.  
There was a lot of blood on the ground. There was a great deal of it soaked into the remains of the nightgown.  
“But where’s Trudy?”  
They had already searched the surrounding brush and woods for a body.  
Don pointed to footprints pressed in the damp earth. The prints were made by bare feet and led away from the house, deeper into the woods.  
“I think she went this way.”  
Flashlight beams lanced waveringly through the black tree trunks and drifting mists.  
“Then we better start searching.” Johnny said grimly. “She may be injured and need help.”  
Big Dan, whose father was a policeman, looked at the puddle of blood they’d already found. He was more than slightly acquainted with crime scene details, thanks to conversations with his father. From the amount of blood in the puddle, Big Dan doubted that there was much they could do to help Trudy now, even if they did find her.

One moment she was fighting tooth and nail with the lumbering intruder, the next two bullets slammed into her side. The impacts were like being kicked by a horse. She was knocked off her towering opponent and flipped sideways. Red hot lances drilled into her. Oddly, she felt the heat but not any pain.  
She spun through the air, twisting like a cat, then crashed into dense brush. Branches scraped at her. Leaves exploded around her. She was yanked about as her torn nightgown snagged on broken branches. She dropped to the ground with a hard thud. Half her flimsy garment was torn off her and hung in strands from the bushes like cotton spiderweb.   
More bullets punched through the brush and whistled over her head.   
She reached to her side and felt hot fluid gushing from the bullet holes.   
With a snarl she squeezed the wounds shut with her fingers. The gush of blood turned into a stream, then to a trickle as her flesh sealed itself.  
For a few moments she felt cold and dizzy, but before long she shrugged off the lethargy that was creeping up her limbs. She struggled for a few seconds with the nightgown, which was hopelessly snagged on the bushes. With a raspy cough of annoyance she torn the remaining fragments of the garment off her body, ripped it free from the bush, then wadded it up and threw it away.   
Now nude and angry, still clutching the red hot lumps in her side, she glance back at the yard she’d been knocked from. Men in black were running about. Hard white flashlight glare stung her eyes. Still a little dizzy, she climbed to her feet and took off, running in a crouch.  
Within moments she was deep within the sheltering gloom of the forest, padding away on bare feet, almost silent.  
As she ran a thick fog rolled in off the lake. Pearlescent sheets of fog seeped upward through the black tree trunks. Her eyes saw everything clearly, in black and white—like an old movie. Moonlight filtered down through the leaves in shafts and beams, making the fog seem to almost glow. The full moon overhead was so bright that it hurt her eyes to look at it.  
Moisture carried in the mists condensed against her skin. Soon she was beaded with tiny drops that glinted like jewels in the moonlight. Soon after that her whole body was slick shiny wet. Dark leaves clung to her feet. She wasn’t cold. She felt the chill as a coolness, a balm against her feverishly hot skin.  
The only discomfort she felt came from the hot lumps in her side, which now itched intensely.  
With annoyance she raked her claw-like hands across her side. The razor-sharp nails slicked her flesh as cleanly as a surgeon’s scalpel. Thick dribbles of push and streamers of blood leaked from the new lacerations. Once the skin was open she plunged her fingers into the wound and fished around until she found the lumps of lead that were the cause of the itching. She dug them out and flung them contemptuously into the weeds.  
Through the whole operation she felt no pain. She stood staring up at the Moon, transfixed. She panted so hard that her breasts bounced in time with her breathing. She felt a slight dizziness, a moment of numb exhaustion that passed as soon as the bullets were dug out.  
Operation complete, she pressed her palm against the side and smoothed the torn skin into place, like rumpled cloth. When she was done, the lacerations she had ripped into her own flesh were gone, sealed seamlessly. Only faint white lines showed where the skin had been sliced open.  
Giddy with relief now that the hot itching lead lumps were gone from her side, she held her arms toward the circle of white light above the clouds and twirled like a mad dervish, laughing harshly and squealing with delight. The world whipped around her, a black and white and gray blur of shadows that wobbled and tilted until her spinning dissolved all hint of shape, leaving only streaks of light and dark. Abruptly the swirling shadows tilted and she spilled down a long gray hillside, bouncing and laughing.  
She came to a stop in a patch of weeds, long dark tongues of grass plastered across her bare skin like zebra stripes. She panted and growled at the sky. Licked dewdrops out of the fog with an eager tongue.  
Her joy was interrupted by lances of yellowish-white light that stabbed out from among the trees. The beams of light jerked and swooped along the slope, searching. Somewhere, from still among the trees, voices shouted, calling urgently to each other.  
She hissed at the lights, snapped her teeth at the voices. She knew that they were looking for her, that they wanted to drag her back to the world of pretending to be calm while every nerve in her body screamed.  
That world was the nightmare!  
The way she was now, wild and wet and naked, was the way she was meant to be!  
She growled very softly as dark shapes began to appear atop the hill, working their way toward her.  
On her belly, slick on the grass, she slithered her way further downhill, ducking under and through the brush. She pulled with her claws and pushed with her toes, gliding silently beneath the bushes, wiggling between dark stalks, hidden by leaves.  
When she felt she was safe, she leaped to a crouch and began to run through the night. No howling or laughing this time, there was only the sharp whistles of breath in her nostrils to mark her passage.

The Colonel and Lieutenant Astor barged through the door without knocking or announcement. They were immediately struck by the smell, acrid antiseptic mingled with the wet tang of pus and a sour, musky stench. The smell struck them like a wet blanket in the face.  
“By all means, come in.” muttered Oliver Frank, his voice muffled by a surgical mask. “I’m only operating.”  
The Daughter was strapped down on a table, nude. The crude make-up and torn remnants of wig gone. There were multiple bullet-holes punched through its torso. Pus seeped from all of them, running in yellow-green runnels to drip on the floor. Frank was dabbing at one such hole with a cotton swab while digging around in it with a set of surgical tongs. After a couple of seconds of probing he pulled a flattened bullet out and dropped it on the floor. It hit with a dull clink and rolled around with several others of its kind.  
“Well, what is it? What’s so important that you had to barge in during the middle of my operation?”  
The Colonel stared in fascination at the naked thing on the table. It was broad with a wide, stocky body, absolutely rippling with muscles. Despite the thing’s muscular build, from his viewpoint it was clearly female. Gigantically so.  
“So that’s It.” The Colonel murmured in amazement.  
“Her.” Frank corrected a little tersely.  
“Amazing!”  
“Hrrmph.”  
Frank dropped another bullet on the floor.  
“I’m Colonel Wickers. I am in command of Project Moonbeam. I thought it was time that we meet, face to face.”  
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t shake your hand.” Frank said, waving a blood and pus encrusted gloved hand in the air.  
“Of course.”  
“I suppose that you will eventually tell me what I’m doing here?”  
“That’s why I’m here.”  
Before he could go on, Colonel Wickers noticed that the monster’s eyes were open and watching him.  
“It’s awake!”  
“Of course she is.”  
“You’re not using any anesthesia?”   
“No need. She is incapable of feeling pain. And she will remain perfectly still, if I command her to.”  
Wickers saw the intense and glittering look in the monster’s eyes and was not nearly as certain that the thing couldn’t feel pain as Frank seemed to be.  
“As you say, Doctor.” Wickers continued diplomatically. “We are here t discuss Moonbeam and your contribution to our endeavor.  
Clink.  
“I’m listening.”  
“How much do you know about the Moon?”  
Frank looked up, puzzled.  
“It’s big. It’s in the sky. It’s quite bright some nights. Airless, lifeless rock. Why do you ask?”  
“Mostly airless. Not quite lifeless.”  
“Interesting.”  
Clink.  
“We’ve been there. Twice.”  
At that Oliver Frank looked up, genuine surprise evident in his eyes. He wiped the monster’s torso with an antiseptic swab, set down his tongs, tugged down his mask, revealing more of his hideously acid-scarred face, and began to strip off his gloves.  
“Interesting. A little hard to believe. There was nothing in the newspapers. I would have noticed.”  
Wickers laughed softly. Lt. Astor frowned, clearly preferring to be somewhere else. She hadn’t taken her eyes off the monster on the table since entering the room. One hand hovered next to her sidearm. While she watched the monster on the table it was clearly watching her.  
“There were intentions of releasing news of the first landing by the Grainger Expedition, but details of their report made that impossible.  
You see, the Moon is barren and airless now, but it wasn’t always so. The crew of the Grainger Expedition contacted remnants of a two million year old civilization living in pressurized cavern vaults. These beings had highly advanced mental powers and were capable of observing what happens on Earth. They were also capable of exerting some kind of mental control over one of the crew.  
There were fatalities on both sides.  
When the expedition returned it was decided that the public should not become aware of what we found on the Moon. Which was inconvenient, since a press pool was already present at the launch facility.”  
Wickers paused, a troubled look on his face.  
“There was an unfortunate plane crash.” Lt. Astor said, her voice completely neutral.  
Wickers sighed and took a deep breath.  
“Yes, unfortunate.”  
“These things happen.” Frank said with a smirk, clearly fascinated by the revelations.  
“The second landing was by an unauthorized private research project. We call it the Dayton-Green Expedition. They also encountered a pocket of survivors from this ancient civilization. Events played out in much the same way as the first expedition.”  
“I had no idea that we had the technology to land on the Moon.” Frank mused. “With all the fuss over Sputnik, everyone assumes that the Russians are way ahead of us in this race to space.”  
“Our Nazis are better than their Nazis.” Astor quipped with what might have been a smile.  
Wickers chuckled.  
“But as long as they think otherwise, the Russians won’t push their programs ahead as fast as they would if they realized how advanced our own programs are.”  
“Fascinating. Where do I fit in with all of this? Admittedly, I am a genius, but I am not an astrophysicist. What have I to contribute to this secret space program?  
Wickers pointed to the monster strapped down on the table.  
“That.”  
“Ah.” Frank said, nodding. “You already have the perfect rocket, now you need the perfect pilot.”  
“Something like that.”  
“The civilization we have discovered on the Moon is quite powerful. Despite the small number of survivors we have encountered so far. They are capable of observing what happens on Earth, even in high-security secret installations. They can exert control without the target being aware that they are being influenced.   
The strategic possibilities are obvious. If we could recruit them as allies we could end the Cold War in less than a year!  
Conversely, now that we have contacted them with unfortunate consequences, they could pose an existential threat to us.  
All of the survivors we have encountered thus far have been female.”  
“Except one.” Astor broke in.  
Wickers frowned slightly.  
“Except for Dirk Green, who designed and built the ultra-sophisticated rocket that the Dayton-Green Expedition used. Green was a male agent sent to infiltrate and observe our civilization for his queen. He contributed the engine designs for the rocket as a means of returning home. Not only are their mental powers greater than ours, their technology far surpasses our own.  
These female survivors have proven hostile to men from Earth. Contact has been fraught with perils. We believe the root of their hostility is the fact that they cannot control male minds.”  
“Of course!” Frank interjected with a vicious smile. “Men’s minds are built to command and are resistant to outside domination. While female minds are conditioned to obey!”  
“Yes…”Wickers tried to pick up the thread of his discourse.  
Astor snorted derisively.  
“Therefore, you creature represents the perfect candidate for renewed contact with the Moon Women. Being female, it may not meet the hostile reception our male astronauts forced. Under your control, we hope it will be resistant to any attempt they may make to control it.  
And being indestructible and immensely powerful, if friendly relations cannot be established, your creature may be able to eradicate the surviving pockets of lunar civilization before they can turn their full wrath upon the Earth.”  
Oliver Frank clapped his hands in glee.  
“Perfect! When do we begin?’  
“Right after we run a field test to measure the effectiveness of our protocols.”  
“We have a Digenerol contaminated monstrosity running loose. Your creature and it have already clashed once. We want to use your creation to locate and neutralize this other thing, before it can attack or kill anymore civilians.”  
“No problem.” Frank said with a smirk. “All we need is appropriate clothing for Her to wear and transportation to the last known location of this second Digenerol contaminated being.”  
Wickers smiled and nodded.  
“We have black coveralls tailored to fit your creature, thanks to the late Dr. Carmichael’s studies. And we have a helicopter standing by.”  
“I need to get back on the ground to monitor and control possible civilian interference with our test.” Astor said briskly.  
“Go.” Wickers said immediately.  
Oliver Frank looked down lovingly at his patchwork monster.  
“Time to dress you up. You’re going to town.” He told it with a maniac’s smile.

Johnny hung down the slope, one arm wrapped around a tree trunk. He swept his flashlight beam back and forth across the tall grass.   
“I’m telling you, I heard something out there!”  
Don glumly stared into the blackness. All he could see were patches of fog and the tips of grass stalks swaying.   
“Can’t see nothing from up here.”  
Johnny sighed and clicked off his flashlight. For a few minutes he stared into the dark with just his naked eyes.  
“Whatever it was, there’s nothing there now.”  
Don looked down the hillside toward thick woods below, and beyond those to the twinkling scattered lights of Lakewood beyond.  
“Well, if she did go this way, at least we know where she’s going.”  
Johnny looked up.  
Don pointed toward the town’s lights.  
“We can get there ahead of her, if we go by car!” he said excitedly.  
“We’ll have to race!” Don shouted, already running back through the woods toward the house.  
Johnny snapped on his light and rushed after him.  
They picked up the others as they ran, casting shouts about and waving lights.  
Soon the whole search party was pounding its way through barely visible footpaths among the trees, racing for the lake house, and their cars.  
There was a general buzz of confusion and a great deal of milling about at the Bruder lake house. Teens and young adults ran about through the cluster of cars parked on the grass where the lane ended, each looking for their own vehicle. Car doors clicked open and banged shut. Engines rumbled to life. Headlights snapped on as blue clouds of fumes rose from tailpipes.   
Just as the first cars were about to pull out and begin the run down the country lane to town, Don pointed at an unknown vehicle stopped dead in the middle of the lane, at the edge of the lights. A long black Cadillac with darkened windows crouched in the lane, like a panther lying in wait.  
Johnny turned off his car’s engine and together with Don, Mark, and Big Dan started walking toward the strange car. As they got near the men could hear the low rumble of the car’s engine, almost inaudible beneath the din of crickets’ song. Red dots wavered inside the car, beyond the windshield. They might have been the fiery tips of lit cigarettes.   
Nearer they could hear the whirr-click of high priced cameras snapping pictures. When they got close enough to make out the white faces of men wearing black suits and black fedoras inside, the strange car’s headlights snapped on, blindingly bright.  
There was a growl from the engine, then the black car began to roll backwards down the lane. It picked up momentum until it was racing at full speed in reverse. In moments there was nothing to see but a long low cloud of dust kicked up by its tires and the dwindling white pin-points of the receding vehicles headlights vanishing into the darkness.  
Johnny and Mark ran after the retreating black car as far as they could, shouting and stopping to grab up rocks to throw.  
“What do you want?” Johnny screamed at the retreating headlights.  
As if in answer to his question, the lights snapped off. The low rumble and crunch of wheels on gravel attested that the mystery car was still pulling away. But now it was disappearing into inky blackness with no light to reveal its location.  
“How can they do that?” Mark marveled, unbuttoning his shirt and wiping his brow. “How can they run backwards down this road without any lights?”  
Johnny stood, hands on his knees panting.  
“Don’t know.” He gasped. “Maybe we can catch up to them in the cars.”  
Mark stared at the drifting veil of dust trailing off through moonlight and darkness.  
“Maybe.” He said doubtfully.  
The curvy, rutted dirt road was hard enough to follow in broad daylight. Trying to navigate it at night at anything more than a cautious roll was begging to end up in a ditch.

Johnny and Mark, in Johnny’s car, crunched down the dirt lane, running as fast as they dared in the night. There was no sign of the black Cadillac, though dust from its passage still hung in the air as a faint haze. Don followed in the car behind them, with others following behind him at a more cautious pace.  
Johnny banged on the wheel and shouted.  
“I wish I knew what the hell is going on tonight!”  
Mark braced his hands on the dashboard as Johnny’s foot reacted to his anger by stomping down on the gas pedal.  
“I don’t know, Man. But maybe you ought to take it a little easier. We’ll never learn anything if we wind up nose down in a ditch.”  
Johnny turned his head toward Mark, some angry retort on his lips, and nearly missed seeing the orange reflectors on the sawhorses blocking the lane ahead entirely.  
As it was he just caught the flicker of orange out of the corner of his eye and reflexively hit the brake.  
“Look out!” Mark shouted.  
Johnny’s car slid to a halt, throwing a wave of dust and gravel ahead.  
Pebbles clattered over the wooden obstacles just before the bumper of Johnny’s car rolled up against one sawhorse, tipping it slightly backwards but not knocking it over.  
“What the…?”  
Flashlights snapped on, shining through the windshields into the boys’ faces. Johnny squinted. Mark shielded his face with his forearm.  
Behind them they could hear the screech of Don’s brakes.  
There was a slight thump as Don’s car rolled into Johnny’s bumper. The car rocked slightly. The tipped sawhorse fell all the way over with a clatter.  
“It’s the Bruder boy.” Said a familiar sounding voice. “I know his family.”  
One of the flashlights snapped off. The others wavered, then turned away taking the glare out of the boys’ eyes.  
“Hey Johnny.” The familiar voice said. “What’s all the excitement about?”  
Johnny recognized the voice now. It was Officer Jamison, deputy to Lakewood’s Sheriff Bennett.  
“All kinds of crazy stuff’s been going on out by the lake house.” Johnny said. “We were chasing a strange car back down our lane. Some of the other guys are freaked out and want to get out of here.”  
“Hey, Officer Bob!” Mark said waving. Mark used to date Deputy Jamison’s daughter during the summers before she left for college.  
“Marcus.” The deputy’s voice was flat and neutral.  
Robert Jamison never really cared much for Mark and he cared for him even less after the fight Mark and his daughter had when they broke up.  
Seeming to just remember those facts himself, Mark coughed and became fascinated with something outside the passenger side window.  
Deputy Jamison frowned. He turned back to Johnny.  
“Highway’s still blocked. Not a lot of places to go just yet.”  
Johnny thought fast and decided not to mention monsters or soldiers at this point.  
“Yeah. That sucks. But a lot of the gang are getting kind of freaked out. Thought going into town might make ‘em feel safer.”  
Jamison grunted noncommittally.  
“Town” was barely more than half a dozen buildings after all.  
“Paul’s diner is still open, isn’t it?”  
“All night.” The deputy agreed, nodding. “I reckon he wouldn’t mind the business neither.”  
Johnny smiled his most convincing smile.  
Mark studiously looked out his window.  
“Hey, who’s the blonde in the uniform?” He blurted abruptly.  
Johnny glanced over and saw the woman Mark was talking about. She was tall and slender and looked very no-nonsense professional as she discussed something with a State Trooper. Their faces were just barely illuminated by the edge of the light cast by the Trooper’s flashlight, which lie on its side on a clipboard in the Trooper’s hands.  
Whoever she was, Johnny thought, she’s very pretty, in a cool, slightly frosty sort of way.  
A pang shot through his heart, remembering his wife Trudy, who was still missing.  
“What’s with the roadblock, Officer?” he asked.  
“There’ve been a lot of reports of some kind of disturbance out by the lake. Crazy calls about monsters and gunshots and stuff. Coupled with what happened down at the Drive-In, we thought it would be a good idea to close off all the roads in the area and keep track of anyone coming or going. Getting a lot of help from the State Police. Even have some National Guard folks chipping in.”

Footsteps crunched in the gravel.  
“Is that the Bruder boy, Deputy?” asked the blonde in the uniform, walking up to the car.  
Air Force, it looked, now that Johnny could see her in his headlights.  
“Yeah, he and some guests he had out by the lake got spooked. They’re heading into town for awhile. Going to Poochie’s Diner, he says.”  
“Sounds like a good plan to me.” The blonde said with a smile that was supposed to be friendly but looked all business to Johnny. “I need to talk to him for a moment, if you don’t mind.”  
“Sure. Sure.”   
The Deputy directed Johnny to pull over on to the shoulder while other men moved the sawhorses out of the way. The roadblock was set up where the lane to the Bruder lake house met up with a paved road that ran along the east side of the lake and up into the hills.  
The Deputy and a couple of State Troopers began to check ID’s and pass the other cars behind Johnny’s along.  
The blonde leaned down to look in Johnny’s window, supposedly friendly but all business smile on her lips.  
“Jonathan Bruder? I’m Lt. Astor with the U.S. Air Force. There was a training exercise that got off target and a little out of hand. I understand that there was some damage to your property. The Air Force wants to make sure that you are reimbursed for the damages.”  
“I’m Jonathan Bruder. And yes there was some trouble at our lake house earlier this evening.”  
“I’m Mark!”  
Mark leaned over, against Johnny’s shoulder and smiled his most charming smile.  
“Hello, Marcus.” The blonde replied without even looking his way. Her voice was simultaneously friendly sounding and totally dismissive.  
Mark frowned, slumped back in his seat and pouted. He even buttoned up his shirt, apparently just feeling the evening chill.  
Lt. Astor tore a check out of a booklet and handed Johnny some papers on a clipboard.  
“We will need you to sign some Non-Disclosure Forms in return for the payment for your damages. Everything about the exercise is classified and a matter of National Security. We need to keep it as secret as possible.”  
Johnny looked at the check.  
The amount was more than enough to pay for any damages, enough to comfortably buy the house and the property outright.  
There was something about the Lieutenant’s tone that suggested that the alternative to taking the settlement and signing the forms might be particularly unpleasant.  
With an expressionless face he signed the pages and pocketed the check.  
“Was that black car one of yours?”  
Astor’s eyebrows raised.  
“What black car?”  
“There was a big black car parked in our lane. Men inside were taking pictures. We followed them back down the lane but somehow lost track of them before hitting the roadblock.”  
Astor frowned. It was a very unhappy frown.  
“No cars came out from this lane before yours. The roadblock was set up over an hour ago.”  
Johnny looked at Mark.  
Both of them shrugged.  
“My wife, Trudy, is still missing. After the…disturbance.”  
“Trudy Morton?”  
“Bruder now. We’re married.”  
“Of course, Mr. Bruder. My apologies”  
Lt. Astor gave him a look of genuine sympathy, the first actual emotion he’d seen on her face so far.  
“We will find her, Mr. Bruder. You have my word on that.”  
With a broad, completely business like smile she stepped away from the car.  
“Thank you for your assistance, Mr. Bruder. I hope the rest of the evening is uneventful and less distressing.” She said, loudly enough to be overheard.  
She waved happily as Johnny pulled back onto the road and drove off.  
She continued to wave as his taillights dwindled in the direction of the tiny lakeside town.  
Then she went back to her car, an entirely unremarkable light blue sedan. After a few cranks she lifted the handpiece on the field radio inside.  
“I think we have a problem.” She said to the men on the other end of the call. “Someone else has been watching what happened at Lakewood.”  
She chewed her lip while listening to the garbled voice in the earpiece.  
“No, Sir. We don’t know who they might be. Witnesses report a black car that has seemingly disappeared. Not one of ours, Sir.”  
She listened some more.  
“No, Sir. That is not good. Should I abort the field test?”  
The answer from the other end was quite emphatic.  
“Understood, Sir. We will deploy The Asset as planned.”

A silent black helicopter descended out of the sky until it was about treetop level over a small clearing. The tops of the trees surrounding the clearing bowed and rolled about. High grass on the dark ground below fell flat against the earth, pressed down by the wash from the helicopter’s blades, and was swirled into a circular pattern.  
A metal door slid open on the side of the chopper. An anxious face peered out and looked down.  
“Should we land to deliver the Package?” asked a terse voice from the cockpit.   
“Negative.” Replied a crackling microphone. “Good to deploy from current altitude.”  
A huge dark shape lumbered out of the depths of the chopper. Hands covered with thick rubber gloves grabbed either side of the doorway and the shape stepped forward, dropping abruptly out of the vehicle. The chopper bounced as the substantial weight exited on one side, then it tilted and whirled away. There was just the faintest whisper of air to mark its passage.  
The Daughter fell over thirty feet to the ground, landing with a thud on the damp earth and flattened grass. Her legs barely flexed at the knee, arms stretched out to either side for balance. Almost immediately she straightened then turned to survey her landing spot.  
A cyclone of loose leaves whipped up by the wash of the helicopter spiraled around her. They whirled like black bats against the starry sky, flitting across the face of the moon. Seconds later they came fluttering down around her.  
The Daughter stood shoulders tilted back, face toward the sky and watched as the leaves danced around her. The chill night air was soothing against her forever feverish skin. Suzie felt a rare moment of calm, of peace even, a timeless glimpse of beauty. If her crushed and distorted lips could still smile, she would.  
In a distant monitoring station, The Colonel stared at a motionless blip on a grid-marked screen.  
“You said the drop wouldn’t matter.”  
“It didn’t.” grumbled Oliver Frank’s annoyed voice. “She’s just getting her bearings.”  
Silently he glared at the motionless dot on the screen.  
After several more minutes passed without any sign of movement, he snatched the command mic, thumbed it on and repeated his last directive.  
“Search. Destroy. Kill!”

The Daughter shuddered out of her reverie. The mechanical buzzing in the back of her skull increased in volume until it was a crackling roar.  
Abruptly she lowered her face and slowly shuffled around in a complete circle.  
There!  
There was the unmistakable acrid stench of Digenerol on the air. Not only could she smell the presence of the chemical at some distance, but a kind of creeping prickling sensation ran over her skin when she turned in the direction of her target. There was an odd pinching between her eyes. Somehow, she could simply feel the presence and direction of another being fueled by the exotic Digenerol serum.  
With quick jerky steps she began to march in the direction of her target, swinging her arms in chopping rhythm with her strides.  
Deep inside the cracked and bolted together skull, what was left of Suzie Lawler wept helplessly.  
For her, the experience was very much like being strapped tightly into a carnival ride, lurching forward with no control over where the ride would take her. Her moment of peace disintegrated into a howling, silent scream that only she could hear.

She enjoyed the warm, squishy feeling when she wiggled her toes. She chewed a stringy handful of raw meat while she watched the lights and the scurrying men laboring to clear wreckage from the highway. She was hidden, crouched low in weeds and bushes, uphill from the excitement below.  
Flashing blue and white lights.  
The cherry red glare of flares.  
Blinking amber hazard lights.  
The smell of burnt metal, of spilled gasoline fumes, the rubbery stench of diesel exhaust as tow trucks and cranes worked their way into place.  
There were shouts and crunches and the tinkle of broken glass.  
She giggled and chewed with her mouth open, enjoying the smacking sound of her own lips.  
With iron strong fingers she dug into the deer carcass she stood upon and ripped out another fistful of meat.  
She was so hungry!  
No matter how much she ate, her stomach was always empty and aching minutes later. There didn’t seem to be enough meat in the world to feed her Digenerol-fueled metabolism.  
Suddenly she became aware of a prickling sensation on the back of her scalp. It was as if thousands of ants were swarming through her hair.  
She batted and swatted at her snarled locks.  
Soon the prickling became a steady, drilling pressure. She forgot the bustle of the road clearing work below. She dropped the handful of raw meat she’d just scooped out of the dead deer.  
Something was coming for her.  
Something was stalking her.  
She could feel it.  
Somewhere high up on the blackness of the wooded hill behind her something as headed her way.  
She glared and squinted at the darkness but could make out no shape or sign of movement. Only a chill breeze gusted through the tossing leaves.  
Her lips, caked with deer blood, writhed into a silent snarl.  
A growl percolated deep in her chest, beneath her breasts, beneath the hard struts of her ribs.  
It was time to go. Time to run.  
She pulled her toes out of the deer carcass’s torn belly and began to pad away. She crouched low to remain unseen. She ran fast but silent on bare feet.  
Whatever it was pursuing her changed its course and continued, inexorably, toward her.  
The Wild Witch broke into a frantic sprint as soon as she was out of sight from the highway and all the workers. She lengthened her stride. Long legs that would never tire ate up the ground. She bounded over obstacles without breaking stride.  
Whatever it was that pursued her, it fell far behind, unable to match her speed. But being tireless itself, it plodded on, unerringly on her trail.

Poochie’s Diner was right on the edge of what passed as the “town” of Lakewood, clearly visible to passing traffic on the highway. The building was squat and long and mostly kitchen. There was a long, long food counter with a single row of booths along the front windows. The décor was all white and bubblegum pink. The walls and the tile were white. The plastic cushions in the booths and on the counter stools were pink. So were the drapes.  
The neon sign outside, which proclaimed “Poochie’s” in glowing cursive script glowed next to a painted sign with a cartoon bulldog wearing an apron and chef’s hat, giving the onlookers a wink and a thumb’s up. The cartoon dog was repeated on the menu over the lunch counter.  
The owner, Paul Pucchesi, with his bald head, popping eyes, jowly cheeks and double chin, greatly resembled the diner’s cartoon mascot. Visitors frequently called him “Poochie” by mistake.  
Paul would make a great show of shaking his fist and pointing at the cartoon by the menu, shouting “Poochie is da damn dog!” That his gestures practically mirrored the pose of the painted mascot, with a fist replacing the thumbs-up, and one arm pointing at the “Special of the Day” on the menu was lost on no one.  
Locals and regulars knew enough to cover their smiles and chuckle quietly while the rubes tried to stammer an apology.  
Paul Pucchesi was a bit of a local character. He’d done some time for petty larceny but was granted early release on the condition that he enlist when the War began. He served out his wartime enlistment as a cook in the Navy. He had blue Navy tattoos up one arm and prison tatts down the other. Having cooked for both convicts and sailors, he would tell anyone who would listen that he much preferred the former, because “dey don’ complain so much!”  
By the time Johnny and Mark pulled up in front of Poochie’s, there were nearly two dozen cars crammed into the gravel parking lot. It seemed that most of the out-of-towners all had the same idea and flocked to the diner to be someplace public and well-lit rather than stay in their isolated vacation homes in the woods. Strange things were wandering the woods this night.  
Johnny and Mark pushed through the door and were instantly battered by shouts and laughter and nervous conversations. The booths were all jam-packed, the counter stools all taken with a number of standing patrons leaning on the counter, waving Styrofoam cups of coffee around. The jukebox blared Rock ‘n Roll while couples spun and shimmied on the postage stamp of bare floor in front of it.  
Johnny and Mark pushed their way through the crowd, many of whom had been guests at the afternoon picnic party. Connie and Cindy were sitting with Big Dan and one of the townie girls in a booth. The two new arrivals worked their way over, with much bumping and shoulder patting and last second side-stepping.  
Several teenage girls had been talked into donning pink aprons to take orders, while a couple of the local boys were helping out in the kitchen.  
Paul was standing by his cash register, hurriedly writing down orders. He was smoking a cigar and grinning a giddy, jowl-flopping grin.  
“Where’s Frank and Sheryl?” Mark asked as they shoved their way on to the very edge of the booth seats. Everyone else had to climb practically in each other’s laps to make even that much room.  
Waitresses scurrying by kept hitting Johnny’s shoulder, which was starting to make him feel cross.  
“Frankie’s taking that Leigh girl home.” Connie said with a grin. “She was worried that her Dad might come home early, with all the excitement, and freak out if she wasn’t there.”  
“I bet!” Mark said, grinning as well.  
“What about Sheryl?”  
“She left a little after Frankie and Leigh did, dragging some local boy by the arm.”  
“Jimmy Something or Other.” Big Dan put in.  
“Yeah. She looked pissed, too. The poor kid didn’t look like he particularly wanted to go anywhere, but she practically dragged him out the door.”  
Johnny shook his head, not at all interested in the evening’s romantic dramas.  
“Any sign of Trudy? Anywhere?” he asked pleadingly.  
Nobody at the table said anything. They just all shook their heads glumly.  
“We gotta find her!” Johnny stated emphatically, banging his fist on the edge of the table. “I’m going out to search around the town. Who’s with me?”  
“Count me in.” Said Don behind him. He handed Johnny a Styrofoam cup of coffee when Johnny turned to look at him. Johnny took it gratefully add mumbled his thanks.  
“Me too.” Said Big Dan, gently shooing Connie off his lap.  
“I’m in!” chimed the townie boy, whose name nobody had even asked yet.  
“Well, we’re coming too!” said Cincy, trying to edge out around Mark.  
“No!” Johnny shouted. “Trudy’s missing already. I’m not having any more of you girls disappearing on my watch, on a trip where you’re my guests. No arguments!”  
Cindy pouted. Connie seemed ready to sputter and may have been preparing to stand on the table before Big Dan picked her up bodily and sat her back down on the seat.  
“Can’t search and be worried about you at the same time, Sweet Pea.” The big guy said with unusual earnestness.   
“If the girls are staying, one of us should stay with them. Keep an eye on them, and any of the other guests floating around.”  
“Good idea.” Big Dan said. “You do that.”   
Mark nodded somberly.  
On their way toward the door Johnny turned back and gave Mark one last bit of instruction.  
“Mark, keep your clothes on. Okay?”  
Mark grinned back at him.  
“No promises, Man. It’s pretty hot in here!”  
Cindy elbowed him in the ribs.  
Johnny rolled his eyes in mock exasperation and hurried out the door.

“Thanks for walking me home, Frankie.”  
Leigh leaned into his side, soaking up the warmth of his arm around her shoulders. She clasped his hand in hers and held it just over her breast.  
“Least I could do.” Frankie mumbled, oddly at a loss for words.   
He licked his lips nervously and smiled down at the pale blue eyes that gazed up at him, intoxicated with his beauty.  
“Wouldn’t be safe for you to be walking out in the dark, with everything that’s been going on.” He continued hoarsely. “Couldn’t bear it if something were to happen to you.” He finished in a husky whisper.  
She beamed up at him and squeeze her eyes shut happily.  
All too soon Burkett’s Bait Shop loomed before them. Three stories of vintage brick building with shop windows at the ground level. Those windows were dark now, though a red neon sign saying “bait” sputtered fitfully in one corner. The upstairs windows were likewise dark, much to Frankie’s relief.  
Leigh led him to a back door that opened into a tall narrow staircase. She fumbled with the keys unlocking it. Her fingers were trembling.  
“Well, here I am. Home all safe and sound.” She glanced worriedly up the dark staircase. “Looks like Dad hasn’t come home yet. Either he hasn’t heard about all the trouble or he can’t get through that mess out on the highway.”  
“You mean you’ll be here all alone?” Frankie frowned unhappily.  
Leigh said nothing, not trusting her voice. She nodded. Her heart thundered in her chest so hard she was sure he must be able to hear it.  
“That won’t do!” Frankie said at last. “I can’t leave you here all by yourself!”  
“Do…do you want to come up, then?” she asked breathlessly. “We could wait for him in the living room.”  
Frankie nodded emphatically.  
She took him by the hand, locked the door behind them, and they walked up the stairs hand in hand.

“Okay! Okay!” Sheryl mumbled through the lips mashed against hers. She planted both hands against the boy’s chest and shoved hard.   
“Whoa, Tiger! Cool it off, okay?”   
She was barely strong enough to break the young man’s liplock.   
He looked up at her, eyes half-closed, panting heavily, completely intoxicated with her.  
To tell the truth, his helpless surrender to her charms sent a thrill down Sheryl’s insides, like a stream of hot chocolate pouring through her. She pressed her thighs together and took a deep breath. She ruffled his already tussled hair with one hand, almost affectionately.  
“I think we’ve both had enough excitement for one day!” she said firmly.  
She gently, but insistently, pried his hand off her breast. Patted the back of it, to let him know that she wasn’t angry.  
“Do you have to go?” he asked her. There was a hint of whine in his voice that she found instantly detestable, like fingernails on a chalkboard.  
“Afraid so, Tiger.” She replied, all smiles.  
He glumly sat back and sighed.  
“I will see you again, right?”  
“Of course! Real soon.” She lied.  
He smiled at her promise and got out of the car. He stood there, in the driveway of his parents’ house, looking at her expectantly.  
What was his name?  
Sheryl wracked her memory until she came up with an answer.  
Jimmy Something or Other.  
“Good night, Jimmy!”  
He burst into a silly grin and waved at her.  
She tried not to speed as she pulled away.  
She white-knuckled the steering wheel during the short drive back into town. The network of side roads and dirt lanes around Lakewood was virtually a maze. She almost took the wrong turn off twice.  
I bet he’s with that little brat right now, she fumed.  
How could the big dummy get involved with such a child? He must be five years older than the Burkett girl.  
She was only a year or two older than Jimmy Something or Other.  
Besides, he was just an amusing bit of entertainment on the side. There could never be anything serious between them. She had enough sense not to fall for every pretty boy that came along. Even if she did play with them from time to time.  
Men are stupid!  
She banged on the wheel with her fist.  
Her sporty little convertible glided into town almost before she knew it. There must have been all of four street lights in the whole tiny excuse for a town! In truth, there were six, but Sheryl never bothered to really count them. Instead of turning left toward the diner where the rest of the gang were congregating, she turned right, toward the lake.  
Entirely by coincidence she wound up across the street from Burkett’s Bait Shop. She glared up at the lone light shining from the upstairs window.  
She frowned at the light and pouted angrily.  
Not sure what else to do, she lit up a cigarette and slumped in the driver’s seat. She hoped the cigarette would relax her, but she felt the hot tobacco smoke rolling inside her chest and it only added to the heat of her anger. She blew smoke out of her nostrils like an angry dragon.  
She crossed her arms over her chest and waited.

Darren Blumenthal, “Bloomer” to his few friends, was clumsy, a little overweight, and wore glasses. Right now he was sitting at a little side table beside the jukebox in Poochie’s, watching the out of town girls dance. They were squeezed in tight on their little square of open tile floor, almost spilling into Darren’s lap. The edges of skirts kept smacking his cheek as they twirled past.  
Darren was practically in heaven.  
Oh, he made a show of indifference, studiously flipping through the stacks of funny animal comics Paul kept on the side table for kids who came to the diner. But he was really watching the flashes of bare legs and white socks that swept by, not trusting himself enough to let his eyes roam any higher.  
He didn’t want any of the girls to know he was watching them.   
All the girls knew he was watching them.  
A couple of them thought it was funny, in the cruel sort of way some girls have about such things.  
As he sat there paying no attention whatsoever to the adventures of some talking bunny that his fingers were flipping through, Darren heard the pad-pad-pad of bare feet slapping on cement from outside.  
He looked up just in time to see a naked blue lady run past the window. Her face was hidden by a tangle of dark curls. The rest of her luscious body was clearly visible.  
Darren Blumenthal’s life would never be the same.  
“Hey!” he shouted loud enough to be heard over the blare from the jukebox. People turned to look his way, but the blue woman was already gone, having streaked past the window in just seconds.  
Darren blushed, but was too rattled to go back to pretending to read funny books. For the first time in his life, the Bloomer was determined to actually talk to the girls around him.  
Now that he had a goal clearly set in his mind, he was resolved to go after it. With every ounce of energy in his slightly overweight body.  
Darren was all smiles for the rest of that night.

Sheryl glared at the light in the second floor window so fixedly, so unflinchingly, that she almost hypnotized herself with it. She could describe every fold I the drapes. She counted the ceiling tiles that were visible.   
The cigarette in her fingers, not her first, burned down until the heat against her skin made her flick it away. A red arc of sparks streaked away to bounce on the sidewalk, scattering ashes in a dusty cloud.  
She was fumbling for another, fingers digging inside her purse, when she felt hot breath against the back of her neck. The breath hit her skin in hot pulses. Whoever it was breathing down her neck was panting, heavily.  
Jimmy? Was her first thought, but she quickly dismissed that idea. Jimmy’s house was a couple of miles of country road away. Even if he ran all the way he couldn’t have reached town in the time since she let him out.  
“Who…?”  
Sheryl turned in her seat and found herself face to face with a nightmare. The thing behind her was crouching low behind the car door. Only clawed fingertips and a horrible face peeked over the top of the door. The face staring into hers was hideous. The skin was dried and cracked like blue beef jerky. Skull-like nostrils flared. Ragged, chewed brown lips parted over blunt, flat teeth in a ghastly smile. Drool spilled in syrupy streamers from the corners of that smile.  
The eyes were the worst. Huge and white, they bulged out of the sockets, protruding so far that the lids couldn’t stretch to cover them. The thing didn’t blink. Its eyelids quivered in place, twitching nervously. The eyes themselves pulsated, driven by a blood pressure many times higher than anything human could survive.  
Sheryl froze. Her face went completely numb with horror.  
The thing wheezed out a ragged cackle of a laugh. A bright pink tongue flicked out and licked the lips, leaving a sheen like lip gloss.  
Whatever her other faults, Sheryl wasn’t the kind of gal who lost her nerve in a crisis. She didn’t scream or faint. Her fingers, still scrabbling inside her purse, closed on a can of hairspray and whipped it out.  
She sprayed the nightmare face square in the eyes, then, while the creature was coughing and rubbing its eyes, she stood up on the front seat of the convertible and leaped out over the passenger side door. She landed on her feet and might have made a good head start, but the high heels she was wearing broke, spilling her onto the street.  
She was just scrambling back to her feet when the thing came after her. It let out a steam-whistle hiss, snarling like an angry cat. Then it leaped completely over the car with one bound. It landed squarely on Sheryl’s back. One hand grabbed her platinum blonde hair and slammed her face against the pavement so hard there was an audible crack.  
The Witch rolled her over, claws raised to slash her throat.  
There was no need for another strike, however. Sheryl’s skull had cracked open like a cheap ceramic cup. Pinkish white brain tissue oozed out of a gape in the forehead and fell into one wide open, shocked eye.  
The Witch crouched there, straddling the dead girl’s body, staring down at the face beneath her with something that might have been sorrow or regret, or even horror. The girl’s face stared up at her, disturbingly familiar. The Witch felt reproach in the stare of those dead eyes. An accusation sat cold and undeniable on those parted lips.  
The Witch scrubbed at her own face, smothering a howl of anguish with both hands.  
The dead girl’s face tormented her.  
In a fit of anger the Witch slashed at that face with her claws. She dug at it like a dog scraping the dirt. Shreds and ribbons of torn red flesh splattered all around her. In seconds there was nothing but a red-soaked skull with bare blue eyes and a halo of blonde hair.  
The Witch panted and licked her fingers, whining deep in her chest.  
The taste on her fingers, salty blood and succulent, tender strips of meat, reminded her of the terrible hunger gnawing at her belly.  
She stared down at the body beneath her, her momentary anguish forgotten.  
Tentatively she reached down and pulled at the fabric of the dead girl’s dress. It tore like tissue paper. A flick of a fingernail severed the bra beneath. Soft, pink lumps of raw meat sprang loose and rolled about. Each breast rolled in a different direction, momentarily distracting the Witch, who was fascinated by the movement. The tips were a light golden-brown, different from the rose-cream of the surrounding skin.  
Drops of drool splattered against the bare skin.  
Slowly, the Witch lowered her mouth over the soft meat.   
The first bite brought a salty burst followed by the sweetest flavor the Witch had ever encountered.  
Soft, not like cotton candy, or even gelatin, more like a thick pudding or maybe hot fudge, the meat practically melted in her mouth.  
The Witch swallowed, purring with satisfaction when the meat hit the cold emptiness of her stomach.  
Quickly she took another bite, then another. Soft, chewy meat with rubbery strands wound through it. She pressed her mouth into the flesh until her teeth ground on rib bone. She sprawled full length over the body, squirming with delight as she bit and chewed and gnawed away. It was the happiest she’d been in a long time.  
The Witch reached up and affectionately patted the cheek of the bare skull. There was something like love inside her as she pried Sheryl’s heart from between cracked ribs.

“I don’t understand what could’ve happened to Trudy.” Johnny said as he and Don worked their way between houses and across lawns.  
“If that blue-skinned creature that came running down the stairs has done anything to her…” There was more worry than anger in Johnny’s voice.  
“John.” Don said, taking his friend’s arm. “I think, I really, really think that blue-skinned monster IS Trudy.”  
“WHAT?”  
There was horror, but surprisingly little surprise on Johnny’s face.  
“Remember those dreams Trudy used to have, back before her uncle died? She dreamed she turned into a monster and ran around town in the night. Remember how there were newspaper stories about the ‘Wild Witch’ monster the day after she had one of those dreams? Trudy believed that she really changed into a monster on those nights. That creep Frank gave her something that made her change. The nightmares were really garbled memories of what she did when she was changed into that…thing.”  
Johnny frowned. He knew what Trudy believed, he’d just never believed it himself.  
“But that Oliver Frank guy is gone. Trudy’s uncle is dead. The only thing Trudy’s been drinking since then has been too much liquor.”  
Don nodded.  
“Yeah. But she started having the nightmares again, before she came out here to the lake house. And the newspapers were reporting monster sightings, again.”  
“I didn’t know Trudy was having those dreams again. I thought those stupid newspaper stories were just bringing up bad memories. I thought she would get better if we got her out of town and away from all that craziness for awhile.”  
Don patted him on the arm.  
“If Trudy did change into that…thing, what will we do if we find her? Will she even recognize us?”  
“I don’t know.”  
The two men walked in silence for a few minutes. They shone flashlight beams into the hedges and down the alley as they walked.  
“There’s…there’s something else I ought to tell you.” Don began nervously.  
“I know, Do. I know.” Johnny seemed only mildly annoyed.  
“You know? About…” Don couldn’t finish his sentence.  
“I know about you and Trudy. Yes, Don. I know.”  
Don walked in stunned silence.  
“I also know that you’re the one who broke it off. And that you’ve been a good friend to Trudy ever since. You’ve been there for her when I couldn’t be. I’m grateful for that.”  
“You knew?”  
“Word of advice, Don. Drunks aren’t very good at keeping secrets. They can’t even remember half of what they said the day after they say it.”  
“You never said anything.”  
“And what? Lose my wife AND my best friend?”  
Johnny shrugged.  
“I just hope we can find her.” Don said at last. “Before the cops or that Air Force chick do.”  
“Me too.”

A block away, Big Dan walked beside the new townie guy, whose name no one really knew. Big Dan had his revolver in hand. He wasn’t taking any chances.  
“You’re Dan, right?” The townie guy said, licking his lips. He was nervous and could barely keep his eyes off Dan’s gun.  
“They call me Big Dan.”  
“Big Dan. Right.” The new guy chuckled, for no immediately apparent reason.  
“We haven’t really been introduced.” The new guy continued. “My name is…”  
Dan silenced him with a raised hand.  
“My Dad served in the Army, in Europe. My uncle was a Marine in the Pacific. They both agreed on one thing. ‘Don’t bother learning the new guys’ names until they’ve been around long enough to prove that they aren’t stupid enough to get themselves killed right away. It’s easier that way.’”  
The new guy’s mouth made an “O.” He was about to say something when there was a crash of breaking glass in the distance. A couple of blocks to the north.  
“Did you hear that?” he blurted out. “What do you think that was?”  
Big Dan had already taken off running and was meeting up with Johnny and Don, a half block ahead.  
“Hey, guys! Wait for me!”  
The new guy took off running, trying to catch up.

The lighted window seemed to call to her. Without knowing exactly why, the Wild Witch dug her fingers into the side of the building and lifted herself off the ground. The claws on her toes scrabbled for a moment before finding purchase in the cracks between the bricks. After a couple of tentative steps up the face of the wall, the Witch was scurrying upward like a giant blue lizard.  
She quickly reached the lighted window and peered in, gripping the windowsill with both hands for balance, belly flat against the cool bricks.  
Inside the room beyond the glass pane, a beautiful young man and a pretty girl were locked in a passionate embrace. He was in his early twenties. She was in her late teens. “Old enough, though.” A silent voice whispered inside the Witch’s head. His hair was curly and black. Hers was honey blonde, straight, and had been tied in a ponytail but now spilled free across her shoulders.  
The couples’ mouths were locked in a kiss so intense that it echoed the desperate hunger the Witch felt so often. Tongues stretched to their roots drove as deeply into each other’s mouths as was humanly possible.  
As she watched, the man’s hand fumbled at a blouse button before sliding inside. The girl stiffened for a moment, pulled her mouth away from his, a protest not quite on her lips. A look almost of pain contorted her face.  
Then he did something with his fingers, something subtle but profound.  
The pained look on her face melted away, her lips hung open, parted and silent, protest forgotten. Then she squeezed her eyes even tighter shut, dug her fingers into the curls of his hair. Her mouth hungrily sought his out again and clamped eagerly.  
The Witch watched, panting heavily like a dog, as the girl’s back arched and she moaned.  
The man’s eyes flickered open briefly, but that instant was enough for him to spot the fogged smudge the Witch’s breath left on the window pane.  
“What the…?”   
He pulled away from the girl, whose eyes snapped open, startled.  
With a growl the Witch pushed her face through the pane. Glass cracked then shattered. The sharp edges sliced through her dried flesh, cutting all the way to the bone beneath. She barely felt the lacerations. The sensation was more of cold than pain. The cuts healed shut almost as quickly as they opened.  
The Witch slithered through the window, wiping glass shards from her face with one hand. Soon she crouched on a corded oval rug and grinned at the young couple.  
“Run!” Frankie shouted at Leigh, leaping to his feet to protect her.  
The girl was too terrified to move. She curled up on the couch, one hand over her mouth, the other clutching her open blouse shut in reflexive modesty.  
As the Witch rose to her feet, Frankie desperately and quite bravely swung a fist at her face, trying to buy Leigh time to get away.  
He might as well have punched a slab of dried beef. The only thing he hurt was his knuckles.  
The Witch grinned at him, then wiped a trickle of blackish blood from her nostril.  
The eyes that bored into his own were huge and filled with glee. Frankie’s stomach sunk inside him. His legs turned cold and wobbly.  
Behind him, Leigh recovered enough to let out a scream.  
The Witch twitched, as if suddenly becoming aware of something.  
Her eyes narrowed with a cunning gleam. Suddenly she let out an anguished wail that nearly shattered the young couple’s eardrums. The Witch clutched her unharmed face with both hands. She shook her head and made pleading, whining noises in her throat.  
Holding one hand out as if to keep Frankie away from her, she whipped around and dove head first through the shattered window.  
She landed on her feet, easily absorbing the impact. She looked up at the broken window with Frankie’s silhouette standing beside the fluttering drapes.  
She giggled and ran off, using arms and legs, loping on all fours.

Johnny and Don, Big Dan and the New Guy came together on the street outside Burkett’s Bait Shop. Something hurtled out of a second story window and landed in a crouch on the ground. Whatever it was it didn’t see them. It turned its head to stare up at the broken window, cackled, then took off loping like a wolf.  
Big Dan skidded to a halt and raised his gun, bracing his right arm with his left. He drew a bead and prepared to shoot.  
“Don’t shoot!” Johnny cried, throwing himself into Dan’s line of fire a split second before he could squeeze the trigger.  
Big Dan shouted in surprise and barely jerked his gun up in time to avoid shooting Johnny. The thirty-eight caliber revolver boomed. The bullet whined up into the air over the lake.  
“What the Hell?” Dan cried.  
Johnny stood, hands on his knees trying to catch his breath.  
“We think that blue thing might be Trudy.” Don shouted.   
He kept running, trying to keep the fleeing monster in sight.  
“What?”  
“I’ll explain later!” Johnny gasped out as he took off after Don. “Just don’t shoot her!”  
“Damn.” Big Dan muttered before he took off lumbering after the other two.  
The New Guy stood silent throughout the exchange. He was staring in abject horror at the body of a young woman lying on the pavement. Her face was gone, only a bloody skull remained. Bare ribs showed through a torn blouse. Her blonde hair and blue eyes were beautiful. Shapely pale white legs stretched out from under a rumpled skirt. She wore red high heels buckled over white socks.  
“You coming, New Guy?” Big Dan shouted from up ahead.  
The New Guy swallowed hard, then took off following the others.

The Daughter marched stiffly out of the woods and plodded mechanically toward the brightly lit, crowded diner. She followed the acrid scent trail unerringly. The pinching pressure between her eyes tugged her along like a pull-string.  
Music and the sound of laughter tugged her toward the Diner. Though the trail led past the building, The Daughter lumbered up to the plate glass window and planted her gloved hands against the glass.  
Inside, teenagers cringed in booths or shrank back against the counter. The girls screaming just below her looked familiar. The boy with them, who was rising up from his seat, half-standing between her and the girls who were quickly scooting out of the booth, also looked familiar. He was wearing an unbuttoned shirt over a bare chest and shorts.  
The Daughter pressed slightly and the plate-glass window collapsed in a shower of glass splinters.  
The boy raised both arms to shield his face. When he lowered them, it was to see The Daughter’s huge rubber-glove covered hand reaching for him. The hand grabbed him by the shoulder with iron fingers and then pulled him up. Huge liver-colored lips, cold as refrigerated meat, pressed against his face. The lips worked, moved in some stiff imitation of a kiss.  
“Mwah!” Suzie Lawler though with a giggle. She’d always liked Mark. They dated a few times. The dates were memorable since Mark couldn’t keep his clothes on past the first hour and she never even tried to keep hers.  
The look on his face was priceless. His eyes were bugging out and he wiped his mouth with both hands.  
Mark collapsed on the booth seat.  
The thing towering over him rumbled with something that might have been a laugh.  
Mark gasped for breath as the monster turned and strode off, marching like a wind-up toy.  
With numb fingers he buttoned his shirt.  
Suzie cried and shouted silently inside her ravaged skull. She’d seized the giant body’s steering wheel briefly, but now she was once again reduced to being just a passenger as the thing plodded on, tracking its target.

The Witch paused to glance back to see if her pursuers were still following her.   
They were, but they were staggering, barely able to keep up. She grinned and waited for them to close some of the distance. She enjoyed being chased. It gave her a vaguely remembered playful thrill.  
She could lose them easily, if she wanted to. All she needed to do was duck into the woods to either side of the road and sprint uphill.   
As it was, she merely jogged along the lazy curve of road that rose from Lakewood, around the east end of the lake and up into the hills above. The slap of her bare feet on the pavement and the whistle of her breath were the only sounds. The night birds had fallen silent. Even the chirping, cheeping din of crickets and frogs had ceased.   
Something unnatural was in the air.  
She felt it, even though her mind was too fractured to understand it.  
From a half overgrown lane that led back downhill toward the lakeshore, headlights snapped on. The bright white light blinded her. Her naked body was spotlighted in the glare. She raised her hands to cover her eyes. Something stung her palms.  
There was a crisp, crackling sound in her ears. A woman’s voice called to her from far away. The headlights snapped off again, but twin circles of light continued to burn in her palms.   
The black Cadillac behind the headlights rumbled to life. As the glow in the headlights dimmed to an orange ember then winked out, the black car began to roll backwards down the lane.   
Pulled by the stinging in her hands, the Witch stumbled after it.

The Daughter marched along, thumping down the middle of Lakewood’s main street. Eyes followed her from behind blinds, but no one moved to confront her. The State Police were elsewhere.  
The trail that The Daughter followed was hot and thick and bitter. Her target was nearby, had been here recently.  
The salty tang of spilled blood distracted her. The Daughter looked down. A ravaged body lie at her feet. Something had eaten the face and breasts off the corpse. The stink of Digenerol was all over it. Her target had paused here to feed.  
MEAT! Cried the voice of hunger burning like a fever in her flesh.  
Drool began to bubble up and spill over her lips.  
The Daughter paused long enough to reach down and grab the corpse’s ankle.   
Red shoes, broken high heel, buckled over white socks.  
“Nice shoes!” thought Suzie Lawler, buried behind a roaring frenzied wall of hunger.  
The Daughter lifted the leg up, turning it one way and then the other. The skirt slipped off baring the limb to the hip. The white meat on the thigh looked so delicious!  
With a sudden burst of determination The Daughter reached a decision, ignoring the horrified screams of Suzie Lawler buried in its head or the staccato shouts of her handlers in her earpiece.   
The Daughter planted one heavy foot square on the pantied crotch of the corpse. Bones crunched under her heel. She twisted the leg and pulled until the hip joint cracked. There was a snap like a branch breaking. Skin ripped.  
With a drool-slathered smile, The Daughter raised the leg to her lips. Big blunt teeth sunk into thigh meat and tore chunks out. She groaned with pleasure as she chewed mouthful after mouthful of raw meat.  
The Daughter marched off, following the trail of her target, happily munching on the leg that she held like an oversized drumstick.


	6. THE HOUSE OF THE MOON

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Monsters and their human pursuers make their way to an abandoned house once used as the headquarters of a bizarre Moon Cult.

The House of the Moon

“Down there? Are you sure she went down there?” Don asked, peering at the dark mouth of a turn-off. The main road continued straight as an arrow up the side of the ridge, almost half a mile, before curving round a massive outcropping of gray-white stone.  
The side road dipped down into heavy woods. The entry was almost overgrown with trees crowding in on both sides. Branches met high over the cracked pavement, turning the lane into a shadowy tunnel through the woods.  
The morning fog, which was beginning to burn off elsewhere, lingered down that darkened lane. Wisps of fog curled out of the woods and twisted across the road like milk-white snakes writhing in the gloom.  
“I think so.” Replied the New Guy, rubbing his nose. “Main road runs straight up to Krow bend. If she were still on it, we could see her. ‘Sides, this is about the place where we last saw her. She’s either gone down there or slipped off into the woods. If it’s the latter, I don’t think we’ll ever find her. Ground’s broken and rocky, the brush is thick as a jungle.”  
Don took a cautious step down the side road. Gravel and bits of broken asphalt crunched underfoot. Grass, green and straight, grew knee high out of cracks in the pavement.  
“Where does it go?”  
“The Witch House.” Johnny replied, his voice even but strained. “We used to sneak away down there during the summer when we were still kids. We used to…have picnics in the old house.”  
A pleasant memory brought a flicker of a smile to Johnny’s face.  
“If she were trying to hide, the Witch House is one of the places Trudy would go. No one ever bothered us there.”  
“So. She’s gone down there.” Don said, making a face. “Down, THERE.” He repeated for emphasis.  
A phantom wind stirred the leaves, churned up the mist. Branches overhead dipped and shivered. It looked disturbingly as if the mouth of the road was preparing to eat them.  
“C’mon!” Johnny shouted as he began to walk briskly down the sloping lane.  
Don sighed, ducked his head, then headed after him.  
“Witch House?” asked Big Dan.  
The New Guy had to scurry to keep up with the taller man’s strides.  
“Yeah.” He said, trying not to sound out of breath. “That’s what everybody round here calls it. Place used to belong to a crazy Spiritualist lady. Only ever called herself ‘Aleph’. She used to run séances and hold spirit-interviews for rich folk from out of town.’  
Big Dan grunted.  
“What happened to her?”  
The New Guy shrugged.  
“Nobody really knows. She lived out here with a few followers. Kept to herself mostly. One day a lot of big cars full of Government men passed through town on the way up here. Something about fraud and unpaid taxes.  
When they got to the house, nobody was there.  
Aleph and her cronies were never seen again.”  
“Weird.” Big Dan said, checking the bullets in his revolver’s chambers.  
“Lot of weird stuff has happened since then. Nobody has ever stayed at the old house for very long after that. Local kids come out here on a dare, or to party sometimes.”  
“You ever been out here before?”  
“Oh, plenty of times.” The New Guy laughed nervously.  
“What’s it like?”  
The New Guy shrugged.  
“Big. Kind of creepy. Cleaner than you’d expect an abandoned house to be. It’s almost as if someone still lives there and just stepped out before you arrived. Never say anything really scary, though.”  
“Well,” Big Dan paused, looking down. There was a bare footprint pressed into a smear of mud that had oozed across the little lane. “There’s something scary in there now.”  
Dead leaves rustled in the wind.  
Mottled shadows rippled over them. The sunlight only broke through the foliage overhead in tiny patches. Despite the sun having risen, there was no birdsong from the surrounding trees.  
The only sound was the whisper of wind in the leaves, and the loud crunches of their footsteps.

Lt. Astor pulled up alongside the turn-off for a small road. Probably a private lane, she thought to herself. She gnawed her lip and frowned.  
She could still hear the four boys as they chattered and crunched along somewhere below, beneath the canopy of tossing leaves.  
She parked the jeep on the shoulder and hefted a field radiophone.  
“We have civilians on the test site.” She said tersely. She nodded as a crackly voice murmured through the earpiece.  
“No, Sir.” She said, eyeing the small figure marching up the main road toward her. “It’s too late to remove them!”  
She listened to further instructions, frowned slightly, not liking what she heard.  
“Understood, Sir! I will try to contain. Yes, Sir.”  
She signed off and dropped the radiophone in the driver’s seat of the jeep. She checked her sidearm, then put a small case in her breast-pocket. Inside was a syringe full of blackish-green fluid, the Digenerol counteragent that Frank had whipped up in the lab.  
With a sigh she glanced downhill to gauge The Daughter’s progress toward her position. The figure was already larger, appearing about thumb high.  
She didn’t have much time.  
Astor set off after the boys.  
Her shoes made no sound as she ran down the lane. She was trained in making stealthy approaches. She’d done this sort of thing many times before.

The boys stepped out from the deep shadows of the lane into bright morning sunshine.  
“The House of the Moon!” whispered the New Guy.  
Don and Big Dan turned and stared at him.  
“That’s what they always called it.” Said the New Guy with a shrug. “We just called it the Witch House.”  
The House was two stories with an attic, gabled roof, a cupola and garrets. The walls were covered with dark-stained cedar shingles. A shuttered porch ran the length of the second story, facing the lake, held up by sagging wooden struts. Shaggy patches of green moss mottled the gray stone foundation of the house. Greenish stains bled upwards over the walls.  
At the front of the house, facing the lane which circled back on itself, were double oaken doors with a gilded Moon embossed across both. The moon was gilded silver with a black enamel slice along one edge.  
The windows were all covered with ornately carved wooden shutters, once painted white but now a weathered and scaly gray. One window on the second floor was broken, a black rectangle with jagged splinters of glass hanging from the frames like icicles. The shutters of that window lie cracked and shattered on the gravel driveway that circled around the front of the house.  
Johnny squinted up at the broken window. Long orange scars marred the shingled siding below it, like something had scrabbled and scratched its way up the wall.  
“That’s how she got inside.” He said with grim certainty.  
“How are we going to get in?” asked Don, eying the twenty foot vertical climb.  
“C’mon!” shouted the New Guy. “There’s a broken basement window around the side. That’s how we always got in.”  
“Really?” asked Johnny, frowning. “We always climbed over the garden wall out back.”  
“Tourists!” snickered the New Guy.

A few minutes later the guys found themselves clinging to the stone foundation with a hundred foot drop inches behind their heels.  
“Ah.” Said the New Guy awkwardly.  
“What?”  
“Looks like, um, someone has boarded up the window.”  
There was a round of heart-felt cussing as the boys began to inch their way back.  
“Townies.” Grumbled Big Dan.

Back at the front of the house, the guys began a circuit, examining for another entrance. The ground floor windows were tightly shuttered and the heavy wooden shutters proved impervious to tugging, pulling and banging.  
“She must’ve ripped that shutter off with one hand, while clinging to the wall.” Whispered the New Guy, staring up at the broken second story window.  
Big Dan gave one last vicious tug at a shutter. The wood creaked as he threw his considerable weight backwards, but the shutter held.  
The New Guy stared at Big Dan, then back up at the broken window.  
“Try not to think about it too much.” Advised Dan in a whisper.  
The New Guy swallowed hard.  
They moved on, coming to the two car garage built onto the side of the house.  
Big Dan pulled a flashlight out of his pocket and shined it through the dust-smeared window.  
“Hey! Isn’t that the car we saw in your lane, Johnny?”  
The yellowish flashlight beam swept across a huge black Cadillac crouched just behind the garage door.  
“Sure looks like it.”  
Big Dan handed off the flashlight and stooped to grab the handle of the garage door. He strained for a moment, then with a crack and squeaky protest of rusted gears, the door rolled up.  
“That has to be the same car!” Done said, smacking his fist into a palm.  
“Can’t be.” Johnny said, playing the flashlight across the huge black car.  
The hood and windshield were blanketed with years’ worth of accumulated dust.  
“Really?” asked Big Dan.  
He placed a palm on the hood of the car.  
“It’s still warm!”  
“What? Look at the dust.”  
Big Dan pulled at the hood with opened with surprising ease.  
“What the hell is that?” Johnny asked, shining the light on something where the engine should be.  
Instead of any recognizable assortment of carburetor, pistons, and radiator, there was a nest of silver globes. Blue lightning flickered inside of glass coils linking the spheres.  
“Doesn’t look like any kind of engine I’ve ever seen!”  
Johnny pushed past the guys gawking at the strange engine.  
“C’mon! Trudy’s still inside there, somewhere.”  
He circled around the huge car and found a door leading into the house itself.  
He played the light across the floor in front of the door. There were shoe prints, crisp and clear, in the gray carpet of dust.  
“Someone’s been in hear, recently.” He observed.  
Johnny tried the doorknob. It was unlocked, turning easily in his hand. The door creaked open.

“Finally!” Astor whispered when the boys edged into the garage.  
Already she could hear footsteps approaching down the lane behind her, loud crunching thuds of footsteps.  
As the hulking dark shape of The Daughter lurched through dappled shadows, Lt. Astor sprinted to the garage, ducked low by the parked car and glanced quickly around. Seeing that the boys had already moved through the garage and into the house, she stepped inside and very carefully, very quietly pulled the sliding door closed.

The door from the garage proved to open into a surprisingly mundane kitchen. There were white enameled appliances, curved surfaces shiny and dust-free, a long trough of a sink, and three doors. The floor was covered with yellowed linoleum tiles that were cracked and curling with age.  
There doors led from the kitchen. One proved to be a large walk-in pantry—still stocked with labelless tin cans and aged boxes with suspicious bulges blistering their sides. The second opened into the enclosed garden in the back. There was a still reflecting pool surrounded by strange-looking herbs that grew riotously beyond their beds. A couple of stone benches were half-lost in the encroaching foliage. An old toolshed sagged against the red brick wall that encircled the garden.  
“This way.” Johnny said without hesitation, making for the third door which opened to a large dining room.  
The dining room was narrow, but very long. A long mahogany table that would easily seat a dozen or more diners dominated the room. Cabinets full of exotically patterned china lined the walls. There was one doorway along the right-hand side of the room, nestled between towering glass-faced cabinets. An open archway at the far end led to a sitting room of some kind.  
As the guys worked their way around the sides of the dining table, they could hear soft thump-pads of bare feet running across the floor of the room above them. There was an angry howl that broke into muffled cackles.  
“She’s upstairs.” Johnny said. “C’mon, the stairs are in the front hall.”  
“No!” shouted a woman’s voice behind them.  
All of the boys started at the unexpected interruption. The New Guy let out a squeaky yelp.  
Standing in the doorway to the kitchen was a tall blonde woman in an Air Force uniform, with a drawn handgun.  
She looked serious.

The Daughter stomped up to the front of the house. Her sinuses were burning. The skin on her lumpy face felt tight and tingly. She was close to her prey!  
Swollen, twisted lips writhed away from her clenched teeth in a ghastly smile.  
The doors to the house stood before her. Twin doors of heavy oak that opened inward, carved wood with a human-faced moon, pounded silver with a black slice of onyx curved around one side. The face was female, smiling a faint smile, both serene and mysterious, dimpled with craters. The eyes were closed in contemplation.  
The Daughter snarled. She flexed her massive shoulders and prepared to slam through the barrier before her.  
The eyes of the Moon-face were open!  
Brilliantly blue sapphires glittered in half-lidded, slightly slanted eyes.  
The Daughter hesitated, grunting in confusion.  
There was a clack followed by a clattering sound. The doors swung inward, pushed open by a sudden breeze. Dead dry leaves danced rustling by her feet, blown inward through the yawning doors.  
The Daughter lumbered inside.

“Holy shit! Who are you?” gasped the New Guy, eyes glued to the woman’s drawn gun.  
Big Dan edged his revolver out, beneath the rim of the table and glanced toward Johnny.  
Don caught his gaze and subtly shook his head.  
“It’s Lt. Astor.” Johnny said tersely. “One of the people who actually know what the hell is going on.”  
Upstairs furniture was being thrown around, crashing against the walls hard enough to rattle the glass in the china cabinets.  
Astor’s cheeks flushed pink and she frowned slightly.  
“Look, you’re all in extreme danger! Do what I say and I can, probably, get you out of her alive.”  
There was a loud thud as the massive front doors slammed open. The glass in the cabinets rattled again as something heavy stomped into the house.  
“Please, we’ve got to hurry!” Astor pleaded with her very blue eyes, looking genuinely scared.  
Johnny glanced toward the front of the house where something was tossing heavy furniture about like matchsticks.  
He nodded to the others.  
“Quickly, this way!” She whispered, heading for the side door between the cabinets.  
She led the boys into a wide hallway that ran from the front hall of the back. A closed door of dark wood rattled in its frame toward the front. A heavy looking door of burnished metal stood partly open at the far end. Between the doors was a long straight hall with walls paneled in dark wood. The floor was polished marble. Strange abstract patterns painted on black velvet were framed on the walls, spaced at regular intervals.  
“The Séance Room!” Johnny and the New Guy whispered at once.  
Astor nodded.  
“The walls and door are three inch thick iron. We’ll be safe in there.”  
Gesturing frantically with her drawn gun, she hurried them down the hall. She kept one eye on the quivering door to the front all the time. It could burst open at any moment.

The Daughter strode into a large entry hall. The double doors slammed against the walls behind her, flung out of the way with outstretched arms. Stone stairs rose to either side of her, curving around the walls to meet at an upstairs balcony beyond a polished railing.  
Ahead of her there was a low stone table covered with stacks of moldering pamphlets and brochures. Large over-stuffed chairs with black cushions were clustered about the vestibule. There was a bookshelf beneath each staircase, shelves sagging with identical blue-bound volumes. There doors were ranged along the back wall. Two of a slick blonde-colored wood to either side of a dark ebony door. The floor was white and black veined marble.  
The only light streamed through the open doorway behind her or was filtered in horizontal lines through the slats of the shuttered windows. The Daughter’s shadow loomed huge and black against the far wall. The top of her shadow’s head rose halfway up a painting of a serenely imperious woman with luminous blue skin that hung just below the upstairs balcony railing.  
The Daughter growled.  
The painting’s eyes seemed to be staring directly into her own.  
For some reason that made the hulking she-monster uncomfortable.  
With a bellow rumbling deep in her chest, The Daughter stomped into the room and began flipping furniture out of her way. Chairs crashed against the walls. Pieces of the shattered table clattered down around her like hailstones. Pamphlets fell like fluttering faded autumn leaves.  
The Daughter reached the dark door directly in front of her, clenched fists beginning to batter her way through when a challenging howl sounded from somewhere on the upper floor. There were muffled thuds as furniture was tossed about, as if in answer to The Daughter’s own tantrum.  
The Daughter snarled.  
With a lopsided grin she stalked to the staircase and began to quietly creep upwards.

Astor breathed a sigh of relief as the last of the boys slipped through the metal door into the Séance Room.  
One problem solved!  
“No close and bolt this door and do NOT open it for any reason until I come back to get you.”  
“But Trudy…” Johnny started in protest.  
“I’ll find her. I promise. Just stay out of my way until I can get to her. And, whatever you do, don’t let the Big Girl get her hands on you. If you do, you’re dead. Now. No arguments!”  
With that she shouldered the door closed and stood listening until she heard the heavy internal bolt slam into place.  
Now, she thought, time to go see how the Gals are getting along!

“The Séance Room.” Muttered the New Guy as the heavy metal door clanged shut. “I hate the Séance Room.”  
“It’s pretty creepy.” Agreed Johnny.  
He threw the locking bolt then turned to face the others.  
“What’s the big deal?” asked Don.  
Johnny didn’t say anything but played Big Dan’s flashlight around the room. The floor was covered with black carpet. Heavy black velvet curtains hung over the walls. In the center was a varnished antique table atop which sat a clear crystal ball. Strange radio-like devices with odd spiral and V-shaped antennae lined the back wall.  
“Okay. That’s pretty creepy.”  
“But it won’t be as bad with some lights on.” Big Dan said, pointing at a wall switch.  
“Don’t be ridiculous! The house has been empty for twenty years. The power’s not going to be on…”  
Big Dan flipped the switch and immediately the room was bathed with green and purple lights. The radio-devices powered up with a whine that rose so high it became more a pressure in the ears than a sound. Dials glowed green. An oscilloscope set in a heavy wooden cabinet flickered to life. Purple sparks began to crawl up the antennae, spitting and crackling when they reached the top.  
“That’s not better.” Don said with muted sarcasm.  
“I get the ooga-booga décor and the crystal ball. But what’s the deal with all the weird electronic crap?”  
Everyone looked toward the New Guy.  
He shrugged and took a breath.  
“Aleph, the head of the Moon Cult or whatever it was, preached the eternal existence of Life Vibration Patterns, her name for souls, I guess. The death of the body was only the loss of one type of physical conductor for these patterns. The patterns continued to exist as ambient energy waves or something. It all sounded pretty crazy.  
Each Life Vibration Pattern has a set frequency. Aleph said she could use these devices to ‘tune in’ to specific patterns, but she needed some sort of personal item to get the right frequency for each lost loved one she contacted.”  
“So, these are ‘ghost radios’?”  
“Yep.”  
“That doesn’t make it better.”  
“Still pretty creepy.”  
The New Guy shrugged.  
The room seemed to grow colder and soon the guys began to hear faint whispery voices in the white noise crackling through hidden speakers.  
“Okay. I say we get out of here.” Big Dan declared.  
He flipped the wall switch again, but nothing changed. The weird devices continued to whine and spit and crackle. If anything, the whispery voices began to become clearer.  
“Glad to oblige.” Johnny said, pulling at the black curtains over one wall. In a moment he found another metal door hidden beneath.  
“This goes to the library.” He said, tugging a bolt loose. “Trudy and I used to have picnics in the library every summer.”  
“What about the pretty lady with the big gun? Didn’t she say that we should stay put?”  
Johnny pulled open the door with a rusty screech.  
“I don’t trust Miss Astor as far as I could throw her. I think she and the people she’s with are responsible for everything that’s happened tonight. I’m going to find Trudy and get out of here.”

Just as The Daughter reached the top of the staircase, a door burst open. A wild-eyed naked blue woman-thing leaped out hissing like an angry cat. The Wild Witch landed with both feet on The Daughter’s chest and immediately started slashing at her eyes with clawed fingers.  
Both the weight and the impact were negligible, but the sheer ferocity of the attack mad The Daughter take a step backward. Her thick boot thumped on the step behind her and she lost her footing. The Daughter clumsily waved her arms for balance before topping over backwards and sliding head-first down the staircase.  
The Wild Witch leaped off of her as The Daughter fell, then crouched cackling with laughter at the head of the stairs as her opponent bounced and slid down the stairs, arms still waving futilely.  
When The Daughter stopped her tumble by digging massive blunt fingers into the plaster of the wall, gouging a deep furrow, the Witch turned and loped away on all fours. She banged through another door and disappeared from the landing.  
Awkwardly, The Daughter pulled and slewed sideways, eventually staggering back to her feet, after kicking a few posts out of the railing. A ferocious snarl twisted her misshapen face. With grim determination she began to plod back up the stairs.  
The door out of the Séance Room led into a large walk-in closet. Shapeless piles of vintage clothing moldered in the corners. There was a full length mirror on the inside of the closed door on the other side. The reflection of the flashlight beam shone back in the guys’ faces. Pale ghostly reflections of their faces floated around the shining star of the flashlight in the mirror. They frowned uncomfortably at themselves. The reflected faces seemed on the brink of saying something.  
The air smelled thick with mothballs and dust and the nose-tickling scent of mildew.  
Johnny crossed the closet space in a couple of steps, the black bulk of his shadow blotting out the reflected faces before they could speak.  
He slowly cracked the door open. Sunlight streamed in through the crack.  
“Coast looks clear.” He said after a moment, flinging the door open.  
The master bedroom of the defunct cult’s mistress lie beyond. Sunlight shone down from a circular skylight in the ceiling, rays squeezing past the shadows of fallen leaves plastered against the glass. The room was dominated by a large circular bed, still covered by the dusty folds of an immaculately smooth satin sheet. There were various chests of drawers and armoires lining the walls. Most of the drawers were pulled open and hung at crooked slants.  
There was a sunken bath at one end of the room, like something out of a Cleopatra movie. Its white marble was dry and gray with dust beyond torn privacy screens of vaguely Oriental design. Another full length mirror in an antique standing frame faced the bed.  
Strangely, there was a nightstand beside the bed that was crowded with an assortment of glass bottles, ivory combs, silver brushes, various articles of toiletries, and even jewelry heaped upon it. All piled haphazardly with some items spilling over onto the floor.  
The New Guy shuddered slightly.  
“Twenty years of standing empty, pretty much everything of value got looted at one time or another, but here most of it is, back on the nightstand. Word in town has always been that it was bad luck—very bad luck—to steal anything from the Witch House. Most of the items that got stolen were eventually returned, with formal apologies.  
There’s even a ritual for asking forgiveness. All the girls know it. I don’t remember it myself.”  
“Hail, hail, Mother Moon! Something, something, something.” Johnny whispered with the ghost of a smile. “Trudy took a bottle of perfume once, when we were kids. We had to make a special trip out here one weekend so she could return it.”  
“I remember that.” Don said with a chuckle. “She was allergic or something, broke out in terrible hives when she tried to use it. Broke a mirror and tore a blouse too as I recall.”  
Big Dan laughed.  
“Tore her blouse at school. Everyone could see her bra. Pink. Very nice.” He said with a lazy grin.  
“She was mortified.” Johnny said ruefully. “I had to drive us out here right after that.”  
“Man, this place gives me the creeps.” Big Dan whispered after they finished chuckling over Trudy’s sophomore year mishap. “This whole house gives me the creeps.” He added after a few seconds.  
Johnny eased another door open. It led back into the hallway between the front of the house and the Séance Room. There was a terrible bellow of rage coming from the front.  
Johnny closed the door quickly.  
“We need to get upstairs.” He said, chewing his lip. “I’m pretty sure Trudy is upstairs.”  
There were thuds and shrieks from the front hall.  
“But we’re not getting up there by the front stairs.”  
“The library?” Don asked.  
“Yeah, the library!” the New Guy agreed smiling.  
Big Dan, who apparently was the only member of the group who’d never been in the Witch House before, looked around nervously.  
Something moved and he caught it out of the corner of his eye.  
He jerked his head around.  
The floor mirror next to the bed revealed someone lying on the bed. A long, slender woman in a black leotard lounged on the sheet. She had a leonine face with high cheekbones and full lips. Her hair was black, piled up in a curled bun at the back of her head. There was a jagged widow’s peak stabbing down over her forehead.  
Her eyes were dark and luminous, full of secrets and sensual promise.  
Her skin was eyeshadow blue.  
Big Dan wrenched his eyes away from the mirror and stared at the bed. It was still empty, covered with a dusty sheet and nothing else. The previously immaculately smooth sheet now showed wrinkles like ripples, spreading out from its center.  
He looked back at the mirror.  
Her reflection was still there.  
She beckoned him with one finger.  
His pants immediately became uncomfortably tight.  
She smiled like a tigress sizing up an antelope.  
“The door to the library is over here.” Johnny said, from far, far away. “It’s hidden behind the paneling here somewhere.”  
Big Dan’s eyes slipped back to the mirror, despite his best efforts not to look in that direction again. They were drawn, as if by gravity, like balls rolling downhill.  
The woman opened her mouth in a silent sigh. A pink tongue flickered over her lips. She writhed in a feline stretch that arched her back and jabbed her breast toward the ceiling. She hugged herself, then reached out toward him with hungry arms.  
“Here it is.” Johnny said from a million miles away, voice as faint as a whisper.  
There was a dull click and a creaking rasp.  
“Let’s go.” Said a voice suddenly next to him.  
The guys filed through the door hidden by the paneling.  
The New Guy brushed against the bed as they hurried on.  
“Hey!” he shouted. “Somebody just grabbed my leg!”  
“Shh!” Big Dan hissed, grabbing him by the arm and hustling him out the narrow doorway.  
A woman laughed at him from far away and long ago.

The Daughter marched up the stairs with a lopsided snarl, swollen eyes glaring out of scarred sockets. Her arms pumped in slow mechanical synchronization with each step.  
Above her there was a wild feral growl and the sound of bare feet pounding down the central upstairs hallway. The slap-slap-slap grew louder, then suddenly the naked blue she-creature hurtled out, leaping high over the balcony railing.  
The Daughter raised her face and was lifting her gloved hands when the Witch practically landed on her head.  
Clawed fingers tore at her face, ripping and slapping. Talon-like toenails dug into her shoulders, raked her thick muscled neck in a vain attempt to slice arteries.  
Then, as suddenly as the attack had been launched, the Witch kicked off using The Daughter’s shoulders as a springboard. Palms and bare feet slapped down on the entry hall floor, then scrabbled as the feral she-thing scurried off in an unexpected direction. 

In a distant control room, Oliver Frank stared at a static-filled screen and shouted obscenities while slapping fingertips on his useless mic.  
The feed from The Daughter’s headset, which had turned staticky and garbled the instant she entered the abandoned house was now completely dead.  
“I can’t give her any more orders or instructions.” Oliver said, slumping in disgust.  
“You mean we’ve lost it? The test is a failure?” The Colonel asked sourly.  
Oliver Frank shook his head.  
“No. I already gave her orders identifying her target and instructing her to find and destroy it. She will continue to pursue that objective until successful, even in the absence of ongoing supervision.  
That’s why you need her. She’s not just some remote controlled robot. She’s an autonomous agent capable of reasoning and adapting on her own.  
The target will not escape that house alive. She will destroy it.”  
The Colonel smiled sourly at Frank’s assurances. He trusted Lt. Astor to bring the operation to a successful conclusion more than he believed that Frank’s piecemeal monster could think its way through the test.

The library had once been the heart of the Seleneosophist Society, as the “Moon Cult” was formally known in its heyday. High-ceilinged with a marble floor and crescent-shaped reading tables, its walls were covered with many hundreds of blue, white, and silver bound volumes—which were said to contain the amassed wisdom of a civilization that was ancient before Egypt was born. The books were, in fact, filled with page after onion-skin thin page of dense squiggly print and complex hieroglyphics that bore no resemblance to any Earthly language. Simply learning one of the several alphabets that the tomes were written in was the work of a lifetime. But it was a task that many of the Society’s members dedicated themselves to, working long hours to translate a paragraph, or just a couple of sentences, into something comprehensible.  
The books, though expensively printed and exquisitely bound with the finest of materials, were largely worthless to anyone who could not read their arcane language. Which was nearly everybody on Earth at the time. So, after twenty years of teenagers sneaking into the Witch House in search of adventure, or simply amorous seclusion, the contents of Seleneosophist Society library had remained largely untouched. A few books lie on tables or on the floor where curious teens dropped them after the briefest of perusals. The few scattered gaps where volumes had been removed yawned like empty sockets in the long horizontal smile of the shelves.  
The hidden door to the Mistress of the Society’s ornate boudoir was hidden behind a section of shelving containing red-bound atlases of places that did not exist on Earth. Exotic fold-out maps of improbable cities and fanciful charts of dry, dusty seas hung accordion-like from the pages that the curious had thumbed through.  
Johnny peered around the edges of the swiveling bookcase, fearful of what he might see. There were thunderous bellows and screeches like the cries of an angry wildcat coming from the front hall. The wide heavy door, intricately carved with the Society’s enigmatic symbols, quivered and shook in its frame. It seemed that the furious battle raging in the front hall would spill through it at any moment.  
“There!” Johnny said pointing to a rickety-looking metal spiral staircase in one corner of the room. “That leads up to a reading room on the second floor. That’s how we can get upstairs without going through whatever the hell is going on out front.”  
The boys began to hurry toward the spiral stairs. Overhead, light fixtures in frosted glass, etched to resemble globes of the Moon, flickered and hummed to life. The library, previously only lit by long strips of sunlight shining between the slats of the shuttered windows, was immediately illuminated by a soft white glow, not unlike actual moonlight.  
“That’s weird.” Big Dan said nervously.  
“Happens all the time.” The New Guy said with a shrug. “You get used to it after a couple of visits.”  
Just as they reached the bottom of the spiral staircase, as Johnny was shaking it and frowning at the way it swayed and shivered, something heavy hit the library door.  
“Shit.” Don said. “Sounds like the fight is spilling our way. They could be in here at any second.”  
Not enough time for the four of them to ascend the unsteady staircase one at a time. They didn’t dare put more weight on the swaying structure.  
“No time!” Johnny shouted, making a quick decision. “Under the tables! That’s the only place to hide in here.”  
The door shuddered as a ferocious shoulder was thrown against it.  
The boys dived for cover, curling up between the stone struts that held each table up.  
They barely scuttled into place before the door crashed open with a loud bang. Bare feet slapped across the stone floor, until whatever it was leaped on top of the tables and sprinted on all fours across them, jumping from table to table with the clitter-clatter of hard nails on polished stone surfaces.  
A strong, briny feminine scent mixed with the tang of something antiseptic, something medicinal, swept over Johnny’s head.  
He looked up, astonished at the odd familiarity of that scent, but he saw only the granular underside of the tabletop.  
The thing that scuttled over the table leaped full-length and landed halfway up the spiral staircase. There was the squeak and screech and groan of tortured metal, the rattle of too-loose bolts. But then the first creature was gone. It had scampered up the swaying staircase faster than any monkey could have climbed it.  
Almost immediately behind it came the heavy thumps of something big striding across the room. Metal shod boots smacked the floor. Peeking around the corner of a table strut, Don saw thick pillar-like legs clothed in coarse black coveralls sweep by.  
There was another strange stench that followed this creature across the room, but this one smelled musky, like stale sweat with an acrid battery-acid undertone. The smell left a bitter coppery taste in their mouths.  
This creature reached the still shivering, squeaking staircase. It grabbed it with one hand, instantly silencing the sound of its swaying. A heavy foot planted itself on the lowest step. There was a metallic shriek and dust rained down from above, where the bolts anchoring the spiral structure were driven into the wall.  
After a long second the creature let go of the spiral stair, apparently deciding not to try ascending. It turned around in a quick, tight swivel and strode thumping back across the room and out the door.  
Johnny and the others let out a long sigh of relief. They all felt that they had just escaped a brutal and horrible death by the narrowest of margins.  
“Come on!” Johnny hissed, running up the spiral stair as it rocked as fast as he could.  
Don was close behind him.  
“Oh. Damn it.” Big Dan muttered as he gingerly tiptoed upwards.  
The New Guy paused, a terrible creeping sensation tingling at the back of his neck.  
He turned and saw a hideous bloated face staring at him from the doorway across the room.  
Misshapen lips snarled. Unblinking swollen eyes sized him up.  
He was too terrified to move.  
After the longest second of his life, the Thing at the door seemed to lose interest in him and turned away.  
Breathless, the New Guy hurried up the stairs. As he passed the top of the spiral, disappearing through a circular opening in the floor above, the Moon-globe lights dimmed and winked out.

Johnny poked his head through the opening to the second floor reading room. The room was pitch dark, save for two faint cracks of light at the edges of two partially open doors. The staircase beneath him swayed as Don stepped onto the bottom stair, waiting for him to complete his climb.  
There was a rustle of something moving in the blackness, a feeling of being watched.  
“Trudy?” he whispered.  
There was no response, but the rustling stopped. The silence felt like darkness holding its breath.  
Heart in his throat, Johnny lifted the flashlight and thumbed it on.  
A dim yellow circle of light appeared, flickering slightly as the batteries began to run down.  
The light shone on a dusty cushioned chair with some kind of scalloped Art Deco design and onto the section of wall behind it. The walls of the reading room were covered with a strange pastel mural of a fantastic landscape. The section the light shone on depicted an elegantly ornate sailing ship crossing a perfectly circular lake, surrounded by jagged cliffs. Weird purplish plants grew thick in the foreground.  
Something dark moved just at the edge of the light. Johnny swept the beam after it, but a full circuit of the room revealed nothing but more chairs and a couple of low tables. It was as if something was always on the edge of the light, moving just a little faster than he swept the beam. Racing shadows, rustling, but no footfalls, no breathing, no creaking of floorboards.  
Johnny climbed the rest of the way up and, sweeping the flickering light back and forth, walked to the light switch on the wall.  
The staircase rattled and banged as Don hurried up it.  
A flip of the switch and the room was illuminated by another soft white Moon-globe ceiling light.  
The room was completely empty.  
Indistinct figures on the painted walls seemed to snicker at him, their sketchy faces averted, hidden behind hands and ornate fans. Huge eyed insect-frog things peered through tangles of polyp-like flowers. Their eyes seemed to blink at the edges of his sight.  
He knew that Something had been in the room with him, lurking just beyond his light. But now there was nothing to see but furniture and dust and the bizarre landscapes painted across the walls. The doors had not swung open, nothing had left the room.  
Johnny could not shake the fantastical notion that whatever had been there had somehow managed to escape into the mural before he flicked on the light. That it was still there, watching him even now.  
“What’s wrong? You’re pale as a ghost.” Don asked as he climbed up into the room.  
“I don’t know. There was something up here just a second ago, but it’s gone now.”  
Don looked around quickly.  
“Two doors.” He said after a few seconds.  
The metal staircase squeaked and groaned as Big Dan eased his way up. Immediately after him the New Guy bolted up, feet banging on the metal steps as he raced to the top.  
“Geez! Do you think you made enough noise?” Big Dan grumbled.  
The New Guy stood with his hands on his knees, panting as he stared down the opening toward the library below.  
“Something was looking at me!” he gasped out. “It saw me! It was looking right at me.”  
Big Dan patted the little guy’s shoulder.  
The kid was shivering like a leaf.  
“It was horrible. I’ve never seen anything that hideous in my life. It wasn’t human. It couldn’t be.”  
Dan pointed his gun down the spiral staircase. There were a few tense seconds, but nothing appeared in the room below.  
“Guess it felt the same way about you.” Dan said with a laugh. “I think you scared it off.”  
Something inhuman bellowed down below, its deep bass voice echoing strangely through the house.  
“We’ve got to find Trudy.” Johnny said.  
“Or just get out of here!” Big Dan muttered.  
Johnny and Don both stared daggers at him.  
“Okay. Okay.” Big Dan sighed. “We’ve got two doors. Maybe we should split up. Get this search over with faster, so we can get out of here.”  
“That’s a good idea.” Johnny agreed.  
“It is?” asked the New Guy. “’Cause splitting up is what they always do in the Drive-In Horror movies. It never turns out well.”  
“It’s a good idea if it gets us out of here faster.” Big Dan insisted. “Stick with me, kid. I’ve got the gun.”  
“Okay. Two doors. That one goes to the hallway. There are bedrooms on the other side. This one goes to an adjoining bedroom. All the bedrooms have connecting doors. If we move fast, we can clear both sides in no time. But be careful!  
And, Dan?”  
“Yeah?”  
“Don’t shoot Trudy.”  
“Gotcha.”  
Then the group split up. Johnny and Don took the door to the bedroom next door.  
Big Dan and the New Guy eased open the hallway door, and they were off.

Huffing like a steam engine, The Daughter finally reached the top of the staircase. Her face was contorted into a snarl of rage. Her nostrils flared, wide and black. Breath whistled out between her clenched teeth, spraying drops of spittle across the landing.  
The stinging stench of digenerol itched through her sinuses.  
The meaty stink of male sweat was there too, but barely registered beneath the prickling odor of the drug.  
She let out a bellow that rattled windows throughout the house. Then she started down the hallway, huge flat feet slapping on the hardwood floor.  
Big Dan and the New Guy stepped into the hallway just in time to hear a bone-rattling bellow. They turned to see a blocky form barreling down the hallway toward them like a runaway freight train.  
“Holy Jesus!” shouted Big Dan, who darted across the hall and shouldered the door opposite open.  
The New Guy stood frozen in place.  
The bleary, bloodshot eyes of the oncoming monster bored straight into his own. He felt his gut melt and was afraid it would spill out his quivering sphincter.  
A hand reached out and grabbed him by the hair, fingers gripping it by the roots. A quick yank and the New Guy stumbled through an open door, which immediately slammed shut behind him.  
A bolt thudded into place.  
“C’mon, kid!” Big Dan shouted almost in his ear. “We’ve got to keep moving!”

Johnny and Don were crossing a small bedroom strewn with dusty blankets and heaps of abandoned clothing. Small ivory statues of women perched on crescent moons sat atop the chest of drawers and clustered across the surface of a small writing table. A dozen inscrutable smiles beamed at them from vaguely Asian looking faces. Crumpled, age-yellowed sheets of paper littered the floor.  
After a quick look, they pressed on to the connecting door to the next bedroom. Johnny tried the knob.  
“It’s locked.” He whispered.  
Don shushed him, trembling finger to his lips.  
Heavy footsteps pounded down the hallway just beyond a flimsy looking unlocked door on the inner wall of the bedroom. The floorboards beneath their feet heaved as something big rushed past the door.  
Don and Johnny exchanged wide-eyed, terrified looks.

The Daughter reached the far end of the hallway. She paused long enough to glare through a window that looked down on the overgrown garden behind the house. Sneering at the weeds, or at her own faint reflection, she slammed both hands palm-flat against the door that the boys had just disappeared through seconds earlier. The wood shivered into splinters and fell away.  
She stepped into the apparently empty room. Casually she flipped a bed over one-handed, but there was nothing but dust underneath.

On the other side of a connecting door, Big Dan propped a chair beneath the knob. The New Guy scooted a dresser against the chair to anchor it.  
“That ought to hold.” Big Dan whispered shakily.  
The New Guy nodded, eyes still wide with horror.  
Big Dan eased open the door to the next bedroom, then gestured toward a walk-in closet.  
“We can hide in there.” He whispered. “If it breaks through, it will think we ran into the next room and pass us by.”

The Daughter tried the knob of the connecting door and found it blocked. An angry sneer crawled across her thick lips. Her hand tightened on the knob, squeezing the metal into a clump, then she yanked on the door hard.  
The door opened inward into the next room, but when The Daughter pulled, the woodwork casing shattered and the door split down the middle. She pulled the cracked pieces through the splintered frame and tossed them aside.  
A single brush of her hand swept chair and dresser out of her way.  
The far door was partly open, swinging slightly on its hinges.  
With a cunning grin, The Daughter sniffed at the air, then tiptoed silently halfway through the room.

“What’s happening?” Johnny whispered.  
“Can’t tell.” Don replied, ear to the door.  
Carefully he eased the door open a crack.  
There was nothing visible in the empty hall beyond. The door opposite was closed. The room on the other side was silent.  
As the boys watched and waited with bated breath, something crept along the balcony outside the bedroom window. Hot breath steamed on the window pane. Wide white eyes peered inward from a blue face with cracked skin.  
Feeling an odd tingle on the back of his neck, Johnny turned around just in time to catch a glimpse of a monstrous face yanking back from the window.  
“Trudy!” he shouted, rushing to the window and fumbling at the latch.  
The window latch was painted shut and refused to budge beneath his frantic fingers.  
“Jesus!” shouted Don. “Shhh!”

Big Dan and the New Guy, squeezed tightly together in the narrow closet, held their breaths, hands over their mouths and noses.  
A strong chemical stench mixed with a musty-brine feminine scent seeped through the closed door.  
The Daughter loomed just beyond the door, standing silently, listening, waiting.  
Just as the New Guy thought he would burst into an uncontrollable scream, muffled shouts came from across the hall.  
The Daughter growled, a low angry belly rumble. The floorboards beneath their feet dipped then rose perceptibly.  
“We gotta go.” Big Dan whispered. “Now!”

Johnny continued to frantically scrabble at the window latch, shouting for Trudy, and seemed about to bash his elbow through the glass.  
“No time!” Don shouted, grabbing him by the shoulders and dragging him away from the window.  
Don kicked the locked door to the next bedroom hard, knocking it open just as The Daughter slammed the hallway door open and bellowed into the room. Don shoved Johnny through and ran after him, barely ducking a wide sweep of The Daughter’s massive fist.  
Don kicked the connecting door shut.  
The Daughter kicked it back, knocking it completely off its hinges.  
The boys ducked out into the hallway as the huffing monster prowled into the room behind them. Turning her head, she just caught sight of them in the hallway through the crack of the closing door. She bellowed again and lunged to the side, shouldering the door open. It crashed against the wall and swung right back in her face, causing her to pause for a second.  
She punched the door into splinters.  
None of them saw the blue face watching the chase from the lakefront balcony.  
Cracked blue lips mouthed the word “Johnny” silently. Comprehension dawning on suddenly worried monstrous features.  
Johnny and Don ran full into Big Dan and the New Guy who had just opened the opposite door as they ran through. All of them scurried toward the door to the last bedroom at the front of the house.  
“No, no!” Johnny whispered urgently. “It will expect us to keep going forward. We need to backtrack, maybe slip back down the reading room staircase.”  
The others nodded in agreement and they all spun around and raced in the opposite direction.  
The Daughter, stepping into the hallway, cocked her head and listened to the footsteps thumping back toward the back of the house. She slowly shook her head, almost pityingly. Inside the itching, pieced together brain, Suzie Lawler giggled to herself. Boys were so silly when they thought they were being smart.  
As they moved Johnny and his friends listened for heavy footsteps, but all they could hear was the creaking of floorboards and a distant crash of broken glass. Entering the back bedroom, they stepped over broken pieces of the door. Don looked back through the open doors behind them but saw nothing but shadows.  
“Okay, we slip across the hall, then down the stairs back to the library, as fast as we can. Right?” Johnny whispered.  
The others nodded.  
Just as Johnny was about to poke his head through the broken door into the hallway, a huge square, disfigured face swung into view. Its lips were twisted in a monstrous grin. Curls of blonde hair poked through seeping bandages wrapped around its cracked head.  
“Hello, Johnny.” Rasped a hoarse voice.  
The boys froze in place.  
Johnny barely staggered back before a huge mitt-like hand swiped at him.  
They broke into a panicked scramble, back through the adjacent room, spilling into the hallway through the open, gaping door, intent on racing toward the front of the house, down the staircases and out of this house of horrors.  
The Daughter laughed harshly when they tumbled out just feet from her, easily within reach of her long, powerful arms. Instead of grabbing at them, she waved her hands vaguely in their way and made gurgling noises in mockery of their screams and shouts. Moving easily, deliberately she began to stalk after them.  
The boys ran yelling down the hallway. Just before they could reach the landing, and the front staircases, a naked blue female shape leaped out in front of them.  
The Witch let out a howling shriek and reached out with jagged-clawed fingers.  
The boys broke, separating and dodging into bedrooms to either side of the hallway.  
Two monsters were left staring at each other from opposite ends of the long hallway.  
The Daughter bellowed and beat fists on her hideously muscled chest.  
The Witch screeched like a scalded wildcat.  
“Trudy!” Johnny cried from a bedroom doorway, but his horribly transformed wife paid no attention to him.  
She began running at the monster at the other end of the hallway, toward the source of the Digenerol stench that was driving her mad, burning in her throat and sinuses. Her shriek echoed like a siren through the empty, haunted rooms of the House of the Moon.  
Unseen Things held their breath, hugging the shadows at the sound.  
The nude blue Witch streaked down the hall, bare feet pattering on the wooden floor, then she leaped high and hard, landing feet first on The Daughter’s shoulders, claws and fangs tearing at the misshapen face of Oliver Frankenstein’s monster.  
The Daughter stumbled backwards a few steps, thick red blood splattered hot on the walls, then both monsters crashed through the window at the far end of the hall, and abruptly vanished.  
Broken glass sprayed out like jagged snowflakes. Pieces tinkled across the floor. Powdered glass like white sugar hung in a cloud over the shattered window.  
“Trudy.” Johnny whispered before breaking into sobs.


End file.
